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in ballast, was attacked by ten armed pirates in a boat, fired on, boarded, and completely cleaned out of everything on board, to the value of some $600.
On January 31st last, I reported that between that date and November 7th, 1898, the native papers had given accounts of 47 piracies. Since January 31st, 33 piracies, 5 cases of blackmail, and 184 cases of armed robbery are reported in the native press, and these are probably only a fraction of those that have actually occurred, for, in most cases, the sufferers are afraid to speak for fear of reprisals. Blackmail is being levied by robbers all over the country, and trade is falling off seriously. The matting dealers in one district have raised their prices by 20% to cover this levy. In the silk districts, the dealers are in the habit of collecting the cocoons from the small producers in order to bring them to Canton.
Bands of armed robbers visit the cocoon godowns and filatures and demand blackmail, failing the payment of which the goods are carried off. To such a pitch has this reached that the Chinese dealers are threatening to stop the trade altogether, and as an actual fact, contracts for the delivery of silk to foreign merchants are not being carried out to a very large extent. The enormous silk trade