The summer. has been remarkably cool and pleasant thus far, though now the weather is getting hotter. The thermometer registers 104°F. in the shade, but though the days are severe the nights outside of the city ave pleasant, with cool breezes blowing.
After the agony of much famine distress during the earlier part of the year, it is very comforting to report that seasonable rains have harvest that is to be. In fact, in every promise of the, fine a very few days the farmers will be at the gathering in, as the miilet and the kaoliang are almost ready for the sickle. Reports similar to this come from all over the district of Honan saving from some isolated counties in the west. These counties are not so much troubled by Providence as they are by the hordes of brigands that still defy Wu Pei-fu, in his own district.
Commenting on these brigands and Gen. Wu's men, it is significant that travellers from that district still assert that the brigands hold the soldiery in the greatest contempt. To us who remember that Gen. Wu_ routed Chang Tso-lin's men in the north last year, there seems to be considerable difficulty in squaring these reports and that accomplishment.
The rains that have, been so much of a Godsend throughout the province generally, have been a source of trouble and sorrow in some few districts. As one goes down the Chin-Han line one is considerably saddened to note in the neighbourhood of Yencheng, the whole -stretch on either side of the railroad from Mengmiaotsun to Siping, under water. The kaoliang, millet and beans all had been in a most flourishing state before the rains, but now the waters are so high that little if any of the crop can be saved. This is, however, only local, though a severe hardship to the people most concerned. Every year in semic part of this province there are these calamities, afflicting a long-suffering people.
Politically, there is very little to report. The enrolment soldiers sti] goes on and the intense drilling that was earlier re-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.