On June 4 Gen. Livi I-chin assumed office (which incidental-Iv he said he had never survendered!) as Commander-in-Chief and Civil Governor of Szechuan, and never since foreigners first came to Szechuan has the province been in so lawless a state. The North Road is entirely in the hands of brigands, organized into regular stations with definite charges, per load per person thet they levy from all wha wich to pass unmolested. The robber gangs fight pitched battles with the provincial troops, and military escort was for a time (and still is on many roads) denied to foreign travellers, with the excuse that it could not possibly be big enough to be effective, and the brigand chiefs have threatened to cause trouble by kidnapping foreieners, With respect to" the murder of Mr. Watt and My. Whiteside, Gen Lin Lchin is absolutely indifferent, and he refuses to accent any resvonsibility for foreigners who are chlived to travel. The prestige of foreigners is rapidly lessening.
These robber bands are constantly receiving recruits, for though the pay is not much mere than a dollar per month, each 1s given an eighty-dollar—rifle, 'Then the recruit can desert, sell it, enrol under another man and get another eighty dollars' worth. and so on, In any case a man with a rifle is lord and master of what he likes and the alternative is to be unarmed and to be liable to be robbed and kidnapped himself.
Gen. Hsiung is reported to favour largo schemes for the industrial development of the Province after the war. He has had a motor-boat built in Shanghai for passenger traffic betw Suifu and Chengtu.
THE SCARCITY OF COINS, With respect to the financial situation there is a growing i of copper and silver The coinage in use is dedd. and ten and twenty-cash pieces are absolutely withdrawn Shanghai cheques are at a d count of 20 per cent. There wi an issue of two million della worth of paner money, supposed to be checked and stamped by the Chamber of Commerce, but there was not sufficient time, and much of it was sent io pay the soldiers on the various fronts un-whacked. The soldiers are now using these notes and the shopkeepers dare not refuse them. More notes have, of course, been issued than were stipulated for.
All the salt revenue, part of which ought to go to serve foreign loans, has for a long time been confiscated by Generals stationed at Tseluching.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.