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and with the antiquated state of his informa- tion about the Bengalees, which as an argument intended to carry conviction is singularly jejeure, the question arises how far credence can be attached to his other views and opinions. Coming to Dr. Lowson's evidence, the opinion given by him is certainly to be endorsed that there is a limit to human endurance, and there is a limit to human endurance when with the knowledge of hours and hours spent on the cricket field and other sporting scenes one is asked to accept the statement that " my work averages from twelve to fifteen hours day, and even then I never took up an opthaliac scope to look at a case of eye disease.' If Dr. Lowsou would have used some other person's opthal- moscope than bis own to look at his own case he would have found the view quite different, and when the question of the third man on the medical staff cropped up, Dr Lowson | -should have been the last
man to have used his own opthalmoscope and to have spoken against Dr. Marques, for he was particularly interested to have his own brother in, as he himself wrote up to the Colonial Secretary through the Colonial Surgeon and said, "I urgently desired that my brother should be stopped and kept here at a salary of $200 & onth in the cy for his fly-away methods and for Dr. Lowson is too well known his procal turn of mind to require any very serious reutation,,
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
questioned by some of the passengers who asked whither the vessel was going, but he could not answer them satisfactorily. A few moments later the Belgic ploughed into the sand.
Mr. Henry P. Umbsen, of San Francisco, who was a passenger on the Belgic and an actor in many of the subsequent events, tersely de- scribes the whole affair from notes he made as soon as possible after the incidents alluded to below transpired.
Mr. Umbsen was on the upper deck with the other passengers watching the gradually deve- loping features of the coast of Japan as they loomed up through the moonlight. There was no shock to speak of when the ship struck; it was not until an incoming billow struck her to wind. ward and lifted her up as it rolled under that she bumped softly on the bottom. The engines stopped; the cabin passengers jumped up ex- cited, though not panicstricken, while from his cabin near the bridge the chief officer rushed out with nothing on but his under-clothes. As the vessel was swept further inland she listed to windward and in that position she remained until the passengers left her. Chinese passengers grew frantic with terror at this juncture; and while the ship was firing up rockets as signals of distress, the celestials were
The
sticks and prayer papers by the million. They jabbering about the deck and burning joss were eventually quieted by the officers. Indeed the officers and crew behaved nobly all through Dr. Atkinson's testimony is simply an adroit the trying ordeal, though nobody seems to have straddle. In answer to the President's enquiry felt justified in jumping into the water after about the efficiency of Dr. Marques, he at first the second officer who was drowned. He was intimated his inability to comprehend the ques- on the bridge with the captain when the vessel tion, but at the same time he added from his grounded and went forward to launch one of personal experience when and where and how
the life boats on the port side. The port side acquired is neither known nor investigated-was to windward, but as the vessel had listed that he did not consider Dr. Marques competent that way the boats swung free and were easier to act as a medical officer on the staff.
to launch than those to leeward. Somehow in the confusion the unfortunate man fellererboard and was lost." It was a horrible spectacle," said Mr. Umbsen, We threw him a number of hugs and he caught one of them. Then the waves which were running high would lift him in close to us and then he would seem to sink away.
The method by which the medical trio of the Government Civil Hospital have been in- fatuated against Dr. Marques's possible connec- tion with the medical staff of the colony reminds one of Professor Porson's extemporaneous sketch of his journey to the Continent. After his return from a visit thereto, at a party where he happened to se present, a gentleman solicited a sketch of his journey. Porson im- mediately gave the following extemporaneous
one:
went 40 Frankfort and got drunk, ́ ́ With that most learned professor, Brunck ;
went to Worts and got more drunken With that more learned professor, Ruhnken." In like manuer the medical trio has been in- fected the one with the opinion of the other, and being well accustomed to act together they had been, to speak in the words of Dickens, linked to each other by ties of mutual interest and advantage" to ruin the official career of a brother official of fifteen years' standing in this. colony-I am, sir, yours truly,
Hongkong, 30th September.
A LAYMAN.
THE STRANDING OF THE "BELGIC"
The Japan Advertiser gives the following account of the stranding of the Belgic:
If the accounts of the passengers be true, and there seems no reasons to doubt the veracity of their statements, the stranding of the Belgic was due to an error on the part of her coin- mander. Captain Walker was on the bridge at the time, so was the unfortunate second officer, Mr. Beckman, who was destined to be drowned a few minutes later. The full moon was shin- ing brightly, the Cape King lighthouse was four miles behind, and the Belgic, which should have been heading about due west to clear the point of Sunosaki, was bearing up to the north where as it appeared to the inexperienced passengers there was nothing but a surf beaten shore ahead. The passengers, by the way, were all on deck, drinking in what they could of the first visible bits of Japan that rose before them in the moonlight. It was 8.30 o'clock. The chief officer had completed his watch half an hour before and had turned into his cabin for a nap; the captain and second officer walked the bridge. Presently it was noticed that the vessel was heading at full speed for what seemed to be an unbroken coast line a mile ahead. The chief engineer passed along the deck and was
The Chinamen in the boat held
out oars to him, and we threw him life-lines from the deck, though the spray was dashing over us every minute on that sile. I was throw. ing a line myself, and frequently had it fall nearly over his head as did many others; but he seemed to have lost all his strength and only gurgled and tried to cry out. Presently the current carried him further forward, where the run of the water made a number of eddies around the bow of the ship. These seemed to exhaust him utterly and presently he let go the buoy and sunk.'
S
||
[October 2, 1895.
Though no immediate fears were entertained of the vessel's breaking up on Sunday night, the ladies were so terrified with the prospect of being hopelessly wrecked, that they had to be lowered into a life boat alongside to calm their nerves. In this uncomfortable craft they re- mained with a couple of babies and some sailors until the majority of them got too sea-sick to care about shipwrecks or anything else, where- upon they were all put aboard again. At noon on Monday Mr Tilden came down in the launch, and the cabin passengers with their gripsacks, as well as the mails and specie that were on board, started for Yokohama about 3 p.m.
"CHISHIMA-RAVENNA
CASE.
THE CASE COMPROMISED. The following documents were signed and sealed in H.B.M. Court at Yokohama on the 19th inst. :-
In H.B.M. Court for Japan, Kanagawa—In Between the Imperial Japanese Government, Admiralty.
plaintiffs; and the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, defendants. The plaintiffs by their counsel, Mr. Ambrose
upon
defendants having paid to them the sum of Berry Walford, move this honourable Court, the consent herein written, that the £10,000 sterling in full satisfaction of all damages and of all costs, except the costs already adjudged to the plaintiffs, all further proceed ings in this action may be stayed, except such as may be necessary for enforcing the payment of costs so already adjudged as aforesaid.
consent.
AMBROSE B. WALFORD,
Counsel for the Plaintiffs, 19th September 1895.
J. F. LOWDER,
Counsel for the defendants,
His Honour Judge Mowat made the follow- ing order
ORDER.
Upon motion by counsel for the plaintiffs and the defendants having paid to the plain- tion of all damages and of all costs except the tiffs the sum of £10,000 sterling in full satisfac- costs already adjudged to the plaintiffs, this Court doth by consent order that all further proceedings in this action be stayed except such of costs so already adjudged as aforesaid. as may be necessary for enforcing the payment.
I consent.
J. F. LOWDER,
Counsel for the Defendants.
[Seal of H.B.M, Court.] The original claim by the Japanese Govern- ment was for $850,000 for the loss of the Chishima-kan.
REPORTED ESCAPE OF LIU YUNG- FU FROM FORMOSA,
a junk to Amoy with a number of his flying braves," and that he is now either on his way to Nanking or already in the yamen of his friend and financier Chang Chih-tung. A very similar report, we notice, reached the Japanese papers from Formosa, so there may be some- thing in it.
+
Eventually, by about 9 o'clock the third officer's boat got off and started for Uraga some 22 miles away. It did not reach a telegraph station until 6 a.m., and later in the day on its return trip it was picked up by the Empress of Japan and by her taken back to Sunosaki. Meanwhile, about 15 minutes after the departure
For some days past, says the China Cazette of the third officer's boat, a volunteer crew
of the 24th September, a report has been cur agreed to take another life-boat ashore through rent amongst Chinese officials that the redoubt- the surf about 300 yards ahead. The inhabitable Liu Yung-fu had escaped from Formoss in ants of the little fishing villages along the beach had meanwhile come down to the re with lights, and five of the hardly fisherman
am on to the stranded mail steamer. With fea of these and the regular crew of Chinese rowe Purser Niswander, Mr. Umbsen, Mr. Chas, F. Einlein, and Mr. H. Nishimura of Tokyo, who seed to act as interpreter, the boat started for the beach. When they reached the heavy surf the Chinese rowers got afraid and wanted to turn back, whereupon the purser knocked one of them into the bottom of the boat with a blow, and Mr. Umbsen did the same to another, and taking the two oars they guided the boat in all right. They struck the beach luckily and were washed up high by two succeeding com- bers. The natives lent all the assistance in their power and helped to pull the boat up on the beach. Here they left the Chinamen to sleep on the sand, while the three Europeans and Mr. Nishimura pushed on to Tateyama, whence they telegraphed to the company's agent at Yokohama at two o'clock on Monday morning. They got back to the ship at 8 a.m., being taken off in their own boat by the Japa- nese fishermen, who understood the waters and currents better than the Chinamen."
COLLISION AT BANGKOK.
THE RULES OF NAVIGATION ON THE
MENAM.
A collision occurred near Bangkok on the 18th September between the British steamer Kongsee and the German steamer Donar. The Kongsee had a plate fractured abreast the engine room, and a dinghy smashed to pieces on the port side, while the Donar had a few stanchions broken.
At the request of the Kongsee a British Naval Court of Inquiry was held to investigate the circumstances of the collision, so far as that vessel was concerned. The following was the finding of the Court —
That, according to Art. 16 in the Order in Council of the 11th August, 1894, “ If two shị p