I have just returned from six days' visit in Rungcheng, where I had not been for six months, owing to constant reports of disorder. The official was changed again two or three months ago and he is the fourth man as magistrate there within less than a year. There was great excitement over the robber situation, the main head of the fraternity still being the honoured gentleman who a year ago was head of the troops in the city! He knows his game and where and how find it, and there seems to be no real effort made to destroy this awful plague upon the country.
Citizens in many places have organized the new society which has been described in the "'North-China Daily News' and which has some of the tenets of the Ta Tao Hwei that led up to the Boxer trouble of 1900. They claim to be immune to bullet and knife words, but somehow their theory does not always hold good. Last Friday a band of tufei went some 25 Ji to the south and captured 24 members of this new society, which was organized largely to protect their homes against the tufei. The latter were pursued by other Hong Pei Chang and had a battle at a vil-age. Fourteen men were killed, all being persons of considerable property and two of them were amongst the 24 captives. One old man was killed, all his property burned and his son carried away captive. One young man is reported some time ago to have killed six tutee #hd a larger band came back and murdered him. Another band in open daylight swept a section north of Rungcheng, taking people and an-unals from the fields where they were at work. Several women are in these bands of mounted robbers.
Officials will not receive taxes in taels, in which it is always assessed, but must have dollars or coppers, and just now the rate in these counties is 5,500 to 7,000 per tael. They can buy silver to send on at not over 3,000.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.