Wenchow, Oct. 5.
Since my communication of Sept. 2i reporting the recent typhoon, we have had a deluge in this city and district which has added very considerably to the damage and distress. Many houses and buildings in the city, already partly damaged or demolished in part, have now either completed their demolition or have suffered the falling of insecure walls. People have been rendered desperate by this double calamity and some whose houses have now collapsed have been known to go out into the open and stand there under the pitiless pouring heavens, utterly indifferent to and ap: parently rendered oblivious of the need to seek other shelter, in stony despair.
News in the city is to the effect that a town of several thousand inhabitants situated on the river bank about 100 miles west of Wenchow has been swept away, and today I hear that in the Pingyang-hsien in the south of this prefecture and containing the largest plain in this District the water stands from five to seven feet deep on the plain, making it impassable to pedestrians. One missionary has had to return from an intended three weeks' tour of his stations there, unable to proceed because of the floods. A young Chinese pastor sent to investigate the condition of damaged property belonging to his church, speaks the crops in the hsien he visited standing black amid the flood.
The highest officials of the Prefecture have been calling on some of the foreigners to-day. After calling on the writer and explaining their errand they repaired to the R, C. Mission, thence to the Commissioner of Customs, to ask the cooperation of the foreigners, as was done last year during the stress of flood and famine, in forming a joint committee for the con; sideration of measures of relief, and "means of organization for its distribution, 7 Great tubs of rice congee are being carried round the streets herve from which the very poor are allowed to take a_ portion. The temples are being filled with the homeless from city and country, and one hears of recently well-to-do people now being outcast, their only shelter now some temple.
One of the great trees in the city brought down in the general ruin, destroying a house in its fall, was bought the other day by a man for $17. It cost him $90 to have it sawn into logs and it is uncertain whether or not he will be able to find the money to have the logs carried to his home.
The China Merchants str. Feiching, kept in port here for 16
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.