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THE RELIEF OF PEKING.
(Daily Press, 21st August.) Considering the number and variety of the troops engaged, the late advance on Feking may well be considered an unique phenomenon in military history. It certainly speaks well for the temper of the troops that within ten days from the date of the Peitsang fight the Allies actually passed through the gates of the Capital. Indepen- dently of the difficulty in uniting together so many differing nationalities, each drilled to separate tactics and obeying different leaders, it is well to remember that the country through which the forces had to pass is one of no ordinary difficulty. The plain from Taku as far as Hosiwu at no very distant period formed the north-east extremity of the Gulf of Pechili, which even within historical times extended far beyond its present limits. Into this inland sea descend a number of rapid streams, or rather torrents, of which the principal in the region with which we are immediately concerned are the Peiho, the Hwenho and the Hutoho. These rivers have a common character, as all rising in the great plateau of Mongolia, here however connecting with the highlands of Shansi. This plateau forms the fringe of the great rainless district of Central Asia, and according to the season its hydrography varies greatly. In the winter months this great coutinental area, far removed as it is from the sea, is for the most part. rainless, but in summer a very different state of things prevails. The intense reverberation of the sun on the deserts of Central Asia produces a marked vacuum, and from the Indian and Pacific Oceans there sets in a constant flow of moisture-laden air, which becoming con- densed on the edges of the fringing moun- tain ranges of Pechili pours down in torrents of rain. These rivers partake of two natures according to the season, varying from sluggish streams to swift running and silt-laden torrents, restless of control, and often bursting their banks and carrying away bridges or any other obstacle that may stand in the way of their impetuous floods. Ages ago the Chinese embanked these wayward streams, and the long lines of dykes crossing one another in every direction are a monument
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[August 25, 1900.
THE MISSIONARY OUTRAGES.
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND the associated troops have had to pass through on their road to Peking. As long as the rivers are full of water it only needs
(Daily Press, 18th August.) the cutting of a bank to flood the entire country between the adjacent dykes, and mitted by or with the permission or sanction Apart from the very serious outrage com- this opportunity repeats itself at every of the Chinese Government or Authorities advance. For some years back neglect, at Peking, in killing the German Minis possibly mixed with worse motives, has been ter in the streets of that city and the mur acting detrimentally on the channel of the; derous attack on the Foreign Legations, Peiho, which, till some three or four years resulting in about one hundred and fifty of ago, was navigable for the ordinary steamers the inmates being killed or wounded, and up to the bund at Tientsin. What between the remainder being kept for some two neglecting to remove obstacles, and en-
months in a state of peril and suspense deavouring to carry on the water impounded indescribable, there is a long bill to be. by cutting the dykes whenever a pressure settled for a terrible series of massacres and greater than usual occurred, the body of the murders, any one of which is sufficient to water carried down by the rivers has been shock civilisation. We leave for the present diverted from the main channels, with the out of account the murders of Belgian result that the bed deprived of its usual engineers in May at Pooting-fu and the scour has risen so high as to render the subsequent massacre in July of the other channel useless for purposes of navigation. foreigners remaining there, and will just This slight description of the natural difficul- briefly consider missionary murders alone. ties in the way of the Relief Column will Had these occurred at any other time, the serve to show what a task has been perform- whole of Christendom would have been wild ed. Matters of course might have been with indignation; Western civilisation would much worse. The N.-C. Daily News special have stood aghast. But in the shock of correspondent indeed wrote from Hosiwu:
arms, and the excitement with which the Our march here has really been an easy mystery which has so long hung over the one, for there has been no organised effort fate of hundreds of foreigners shut up in on the part of the Chinese to stop us in the British Legation at Peking, where the the field. They were about to divert the tragedy and the heroism of Lucknow are river when the troops reached Hosiwu, and being enacted over again, the dismal fate of it was extremely fortunate we were able
some scores of martyred, tortured, and "to stop them.” A widespread flooding of tormented missionaries has been relegated the country would have caused a further to a secondary position in the interest of the delay by the destruction of fodder and public, the attention of Cabinets, and the provisions, so that the whole force locked operations of the relieving armies. Never- up in this swampy and impossible district theless it is not too much to say that China would have been entirely dependent on outer has in this case, as in past outrages of the sources for its supplies from day to day. same sort, been true to her character for The Relief Force was further lucky in meet- barbarism, cruelty, and inhumanity. Neither ing apparently with no difficulties on its age nor sex has had power to stay the arrival at Peking itself. The defences of the ferocious hand of the Chinese savage when Capital are of the old-world type, and can let loose on unoffending and helpless prey offer no serious difficulty to a force armed against whom his prejudices and passions with modern artillery; but they present have been excited by vile, wanton, and wicked difficulties of their own, which are not to be libels and mis-statements. underrated. In the first place the space included within the walls is some eighteen square miles in area; and the circumference of the outer walls amounts to, say, twenty miles odd, so that practically an investiture of the city with the available force would have been out of the question. Doubtless an army that had learnt the art in South Africa would find the walls of Peking pre- sent no more formidable obstacle than many of the kopjes successfully stormed by the British troops there; but the troops which relieved Peking were not old battalions in- ured to this style of warfare, but compara tively unskilled levies of differing nation- ality. We have indeed every reason to be thankful that the enemy lost heart after Yangtsun, and offered no further serious opposition to the march of the Allies. Other- wise we should have had to mourn the loss
of patient toil and industry. Like most things connected with the Chinese, while monuments of industry, they have been put up in total ignorance of any but the most rudimentary hydraulic laws, and it is difficult to say whether the plain of Tientsin suffers more from the vagaries of the rivers, or from the ill-planned and ill-constructed dykes of the Chinese, which everywhere keep up the escaping waters till the greater part of the district consists of little more than a series of shallow lakes, preventing rìl cultivation, and yielding no better harvest than a few poorly conditioned fish. Et the ignorance of the Chinese has had a worse effect; naturally tortuous as are the rivers, the Chinese by their embankments have exaggerated this tendency, with the object of diminishing the speed of the cur rents. The consequence is that the rivers in flood-time heavily laden with silt, are forced to deposit it on their beds, with the result that the channels are raised over the adjacent country, and the entire drainage of an area of over 15,000 square miles is detri- mentally affected; and what might, and ought to, be a fertile country is now nothing better than a pestilential swamp inhabited by a miserable peasantry, and in spite of abundant supplies of water always liable to famine when a lesser rainfall than usual occurs. Such is the country which
The anti-missionary crusade, started by the Boxer fanatics, fanned by the gentry, and sanctioned and encouraged by a section of the officials, among whom the bloodthirsty Prince TUAN, his henchman LI PING-HENG, and the Governor of Manchuria, have achieved an unenviable pre-eminence, seems to have claimed its first victims in May last, when the Revs. C. ROBINSON and H. V. NORMAN, missionaries sent out by the So- ciety for the Propagation of the Gospel, were killed by a mob at Yungching, a town about twenty miles from Paoting-fu, the provincial capital of Chihli. For this crime, we believe, no reparation has been made, no punishment inflicted on the authors. The Borers were even then said by the officials to be out of hand, and Lefore the ques tion could be settled the storm had burst over the capital. The next event of the kind recorded was the shocking murder, on the 3rd July, of Mgr. GUILLON, Bishop of Euménie, Fathers EMonet, CORBEL, BOURGEOIS, and VEUILLEMONT, and two There has been a most unusual increase this Sisters of Mercy, all belonging to the French year in the tenders for the Opium and Spirit Mission Etrangères at Moukden, the capital Farms in the Straits Settlements. They are:
of Manchuria. The details of this atrocity $83.500: Johore $60,000, with an Singapore $238,500, being an increase of increase of
to hand are rather sparse, but they are more $3,600: Penang 8125.000 with an increase of than sufficiently horrifying. The mission- $3,600, and Malaces $20,200, an increase of aries were not struck down in the attack on $4,500.
the Mission premises, but after capture they were deliberately roasted to death, the Gov- ernor of Moukden being a spectator of the barbarous act. This infamy was perpetrated by the officials themselves, who were obey- Shortly after the above terrible tragedy, in- ing the orders of the usurpers at Peking. formation reached us, subsequently con- firmed by an escaped priest, of the murder at Hengchou, on the Siang river, in Hunan pro
of many more brave lives, and the relievers might even have been too late for that rescue which they have so happily effected.
On the evening of the 15th instant about 1,000 men turned out for the parade of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. The rnits on parade were the Artillery, A. & B. Co.'s, the Reserves, Companies, the Naval Brigade. Customs Com American, German, French and Japanese pany, and Ambulance Company. The Light Horse were not present. This is the first oc casion on which the French Company had their parade with the British.
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