fo the Editor of the "Norta-Cama Datty News."
Srr,—I do not know who your curiously-named correspondents are, who have taken it upon themselves to glorify Ningpo, and to represent it to the unwary public as a sort of Paradise on earth, but I do feel it my duty to take the first opportunity of contradicting the entirely false state. ments that they have dared to make. I have myself lived in the piaes for three -years, 80 am qualified to give a truthful account of it, and, in saying that it is one of the most poisonous plague-spots that I have over had the misfortune_to visit, I do no exaggerate. Disregarding the question of bandits, which is of course absurd, I affirm that no single statement that these gentlemen (?) have made is in the smallest, degree applicable. shooting is poor, in fact negligible, its river is a muddy and intensely disagreeable waterway, which would compare unfavourably with a, Birmingham canal, and its celebrated clubs consist of one ramshackle building into which occasionally a few jaundiced brid-gear billiard-players. make their way for the purpose of indulging in mutual recriminations. As for the for-famed hospitality, well I can only say that I have yet to sce any traces of it. I am averse to such strong criticism in most cases but on this occasion I conside that the public is being deliberately deluded, and I have no course but to put before them an accurate picture of Ningpo, as it really is. My advice is there~ fore, that if any man finds himself called upon to go there at any time, let him take his razor, sharpen it. and speedily make his way to another and, I cannot doubt, better sphere of action. am, ete., Ningpo, Sept. 28, 1093,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.