Shaohsing, Sept. 20.
In one of my former letters mentioned that the Shaohsing people were offering considerable opposition to the plans formed by engineers to demolish some five of the city wall and to build a new motor road on the site. It would seem that the voices of the people and the superstitious gentry have prevailed for the moment, for the wall is not to be molested and an attempt will be made to find another way. With the wall still in position, the dragon in the hill outside the city need not be disturbed and its inhabitants can pursue their daty avocations unperturbed, An itinerant Buddhist priest was apprehended by the police inthe early part of this week for disturbing the minds of ihe people by prophesying in the streets of the city, after the manner of Jonah in Nineveh, that on the 28th day of the seventh moon Shaohsing would be destroyed. Earthquakes and floods were to wipe us all out. The day has. however, passed and we can_ al} breathe a sigh of relief, as nothing outward has happened after all.
There is much distress in Cheng, Sinchang and Chuki /siens owing to the succession of typhoons that have swept over those districts. The great Shaohsing plain has been let off lightly and all free crops look promising.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.