Your correspondent and his wife arrived here on August 25 after spending very pleasantly and with profit just one month at Peitaiho. The whole round trip was without any serious mishap, though we realized that we were moving among dangers both seen and unseen. The most exciting thing along the way was the boarding of the same train we were, on at Tangsan for Hsuchowfu of the band of soldiers who had there arrested an Italian subject, reported to have been found at Tangsan the day before, July 15, with a box of war materials supposedly for the tufei, I have not yet seen what was done with him and several associates who were running a hotel at Hsuchowfu, but who were suspected to have as their main business the smuggling of arms, ammunition, opium and morphia. An intelligent travelling Chinese friend had told me at Kueitehfu, while I wa'tod for the train, that he very much suspected this hotel as being in other business than that of ordinary hotel business.
I find that Pochow and the immediately surrounding country have been kept in quiet and peace during the summer and that now many of the people who had fled into this city and suburbs from surrounding country have returoed to the country since the kaoliang has been cut and the hiding place of robbers has been greatly decreased. But there have been some serious happenings in the surrounding counties. In the carly summer the hsien official at: Kueitehfu was changed and the new one declined to recognize and support the man Hoh Hai-er, at Wuhsiangehi, who was last winter taken over from robber band as_a small military official, and so Hoh went again afield as a robber leader and was terrorizing the community.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.