Sessional_Paper_1893 — Page 523

HONGKONG, No. 97.

HONGKONG.

519

No. 29 98

DESPATCH FROM THE SECRETARY OF STATE TRANSMITTING COPY OF A NOTE FROM THE CHINESE MINISTER WITH REFERENCE TO

THE YELLOW RIVER INUNDATION IN 1887,

Laid before the Legislative Council by Command of His Excellency the Governor, on the 29th August, 1893.

DOWNING STREET,

9th June, 1893.

SIR,

I have the honour to transmit to you, for your information, the document noted below relative to the Yellow River inundation in 1887, which has been received from the Foreign Office.

I have the honour to be,

Sir,

Your most obedient humble Servant,

The Officer administering the Government of

HONGKONG.

Date.

2nd June........

R. H. MEADE,

for the Secretary of State.

Description of Document.

Copy of a note from the Chinese Minister to the Foreign Office.

Copy.

MY LORD,

CHINESE LEGATION,

June 2nd, 1893.

In 1887 when, by the inundation caused by the bursting of the banks of the Yellow River, a very large tract of country was devastated and many tens of thousands of the Chinese people were reduced to the direst distress, Sir W. DES Vœux, the late Governor of Hongkong, raised a large fund for the relief of the sufferers.

The Viceroy of the Leang Kiang province, in whose Government the floods principally occurred acknowledged the service the Governor had thereby rendered to China, at the time, but until lately when I brought the circumstance to the notice of the Emperor, His Majesty had not, owing to the subsequent illness and death of the Viceroy, been made acquainted of it, and thus it happens that up to the present no official recognition of His Excellency's philanthropic action has been

accorded.

It is now my pleasant duty to repair the omission. The Emperor, my August Master, was profoundly touched with the signal exemplification afforded by the sympathetic conduct of the Hongkong community of the Confucian maxim which asserts the common brotherhood of all manner of men living without the bounds of the four seas; and has commanded me to convey to Sir W. DES VEUX, and through him, to those who, whether by their co-operation or their subscriptions, so nobly seconded him in his benevolent and successful exertions, the expression of His Majesty's heartfelt thanks for the timely assistance they rendered to His then sorely and calamity stricken people.

I have the honour to request that Your Lordship will have the goodness to cause these acknowledgments from my Imperial and August Master to be transmitted to Sir W. DES Vaux and, in order that they may reach the Hongkong Community, to His Excellency the present Governor of the Colony.

The

EARL OF ROSEBERY, K.G.,

$..

$c.,

&c.

I have, etc.

(Signed)

SIEH.