The situation in Sianfu has greatly improved since Fast we wrote: indeed, subsequent events seem to prove that the authorities did not realize the real and malignant nature of the demionstrations which took place about Christmas, otherwise they would not have been allowed to continue for so many days.
About the middle of January the whole population in and around) Sian were thrown into a state of! excitement. by the delivery of small pieces of dough to each household Cheng is doing splendid work: for with the demand that every recipient must make a like delivery to ten other homes. The movement spread with surprising rapidity and within 24 hours had reached towns which are two or three days distant by the ordinary reckoning. At first we could get no information! regarding the nature of the message which accompanied the dough, but, later, we were told that it had an} anti-foreign significance; indeed, it) is now generally believed,—that while it was aimed directly against the foreigner, it was indirectly; 1 I do not mean to say that there is no famine-stricken area in Shensi: there may be in soma district local extremity, but that certainly does not justify the statement that 16 counties are famine-stricken. Times certainly are very hard because of the high prices of food, but that is chiefly due to the fact that great areas are given up to opium cultivation, and that there are too many! soldiers to feed. True, there is much distress, and I have heard of people trying to sell their children on the street, but here the poor are always with us.
There is just the possibility that the wolf might come to Shensi some day. then what a calamity it would be, because people may not believe it and we should be devoured.
Fortunately, through the fluences of the foreigners, the} money allocated has mostly to be used on preventive chiefly by improving the present systems of irrigation.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.