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ness, comfort, and other conditions exacted by the regulations decreed for that purpose.

ART. 111. No merchant vessel, national or foreign, shall carry passengers on deck, either to ports in Chili or abroad, if there is not above them, at a convenient height, an awning of planks or canvas watertight, and sufficient to protect them from bad weather. Such passengers shall, in default of a special agreement, be victualed with rations equal to those served to the sailors of the navy of the republic.

In 1877 there were about 1,265 miles of railway in operation, and 4,800 miles of telegraph lines, with 62 offices. The number of postoffices in 1875 was 333; the expenditures of the postal department were $246,938, and the receipts $228,433.

A conflict between State and Church has arisen in regard to the appointment of a successor to the Archbishop of Santiago, the Right Rev. N. V. Valdivieso; the Ultramontane section of the clergy being opposed to Señor Taforo, who has so far yielded as to decline to take possession of the see until the customary approbation arrives from Rome. It is reported, however, that the Vatican may withhold the confirmation of Señor Taforo. The Government has refused to pay the vicars-general and other ecclesiastical officials of Santiago, because they had not been appointed by the civil authority. The question of marriage between Roman Catholics and Protestants has excited some attention lately, the present state of the law in regard to the religious condition of Protestants being very illiberal, and it is hoped that it will soon be altered. A Protestant marrying a Roman Catholic woman in Chili is required to execute a public document under oath, "binding himself that the sons as well as the daughters that are born of his marriage are to be educated in the Catholic religion, abstaining from anything that might prejudice the Catholic belief of the said sons and daughters; so that, if in the choice of masters, schools, or other items relating to the education of his offspring, while less than twenty-five years of age, it should be thought by his wife while she lives, and, in the case of her decease, by the parish priest of his sons and daughters, that any of the measures he may wish to adopt may endanger the Catholic faith of said children, he will desist from it; binding himself also not to name in death a tutor or guardian for his said sons and daughters who is not a Roman Catholic." A Chilian lady marrying a Protestant is required to give $200 to the hospital for fallen women, as if by her marriage she were partaking of their disgrace. She must also promise under oath "to educate the offspring of either sex that may be born from the marriage in the Catholic religion, and in the observance of the precepts and discipline of the Church, striving further to secure, so far as depends on her, the conversion of the dissenting consort." The following announcement is transcribed from a London periodical dated December 23, 1878, come to hand after the above article had

been sent to press:

We are informed by telegraphic communication that a treaty between the two sister republics (Argentine and Chilian) has been signed. We may therefore presume that the Patagonian territorial dispute will no longer injuriously affect the credit of the two states, and that the only subject of difference between them has been finally removed out of the way.

CHINA, an empire in Asia. Emperor, Kwang-Liu, formerly called Tsaeteen, born in 1872, a son of Prince Ch'un, and grandson of the Emperor Tan-Kwang, who died in 1850; he succeeded to the throne in 1875. The area of China proper is 1,554,000 square miles; the population about 405,000,000. The area of the dependencies has received a large increase by the reconquest of Kashgaria, and was in 1878 estimated at 3,062,000 square miles, with a population of about 29,580,000; making in all 4,616,000 square miles with a population of 435,000,000.

China now has diplomatic representatives in the United States, England, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, and Japan. Tseng-chi-ta, the eldest son of the late Tseng-kuo-fan, was appointed in September to succeed Kuo-sung-tao as the Chinese Ambassador in London, and Li-fong-Pao was appointed Chargé d'Affaires at Berlin. Chin-San-Pin, the Chinese Ambassador to the United States, arrived at San Francisco on the 25th of July. He is a man past middle life, is an eminent scholar who has had large experience of public affairs, and is now a mandarin of the first class. He visited the United States in 1872 as joint commissioner with Yung-Wing, in charge of the educational mission.

The Chinese armies which have been operat ing for several years against Kashgar made an easy capture of that capital December 17, 1877, during the dissensions which ensued after the death of Yakoob Beg. After a conflict between the two pretenders to the throne, Beg Kuli Beg, Yakoob Beg's eldest son, and Aalim Khan Tiura, a descendant of the former rulers of Kashgar, the latter was defeated and escaped across the frontier, leaving a considerable body of his adherents in the country. The Kirghiz of Badakshan, led by Ali Beg, then rose against the new Khan, and seized the town of Sari-Kul, while Niaz Bakir, Governor of Khotan, asked the Chinese commander-in-chief at Turfan to send him a Chinese garrison, as the inhabitants of Khotan had decided to submit to the Chinese Government. Beg Kuli Beg, who had in the mean time marched from Kashgar to Yarkand and raised the strength of his army to 35,000 men, now proceeded to Khotan; but finding that the Chinese had taken Utch Turfan, he fled to the Russian authorities at Karakol. The Chinese army of occupation contained an effective force estimated at nearly 12,000 men, and was under the command of Liu-Sho-Daryn, whose services in capturing the capital were rewarded with important marks of favor. The troops were for the most part armed with lances, only 1,500 of them carrying muskets of

European make. The Kirghiz and the Russian merchants in the territory of Kashgar were informed that they had nothing to fear from the Chinese soldiers. After achieving this conquest, Liu Sho-Daryn was instructed to regain the route from Mourzat, and to march through that place with his army to join Tsin-TsanTsoum, whose troops had already taken up a position between Karashar and Shikho. Beg Kuli Beg, with the family of the late Ameer Yakoob Beg, took refuge in the Russian territory, where the ex-Khan was detained as a prisoner by the Russian authorities. The Chinese demanded his surrender to them, but the Russians refused to give him up. Garrisons were placed in each of the Kashgarian towns occupied by the Chinese, and the natives were commanded to furnish horses for subsequent campaigns. At Zanghishahn seven hundred small-sized cannon, made to be carried on the backs of camels, were found, which had not been in use, but "lay under velvet and brocade coverings, and were all supplied from England." A Kashgarian who was at Yarkand when the Chinese took that city, in a letter to Sir Douglas Forsyth, described the Chinese army at that place as having consisted of about one thousand men, and said: "A great number of Chinese had hardly any clothes, and many were lame and in miserable condition. It was a wonder the Chinese ever attempted to come to Yarkand with such troops. A hundred men only are armed with breech-loading rifles; the rest are armed with sticks and short spears. The Chinese in taking Yarkand killed only a few people, mostly innocent persons. They have done their best to disarm the inhabitants. Some arms have been given up; the people have concealed quantities of them. The Chinese Governor collected all the stallion-horses of the Yarkandies and others, and appropriated them to his own use. All horses belonging to Andijanies (which amounted to some thousands) were destroyed. The Chinese have been exacting large sums of money as a loan from herders and all others; also immense quantities of grain from the villages, which is being collected in the several forts. The Chinese have destroyed a few of the arms which belonged to the late Ameer. The guns, etc., they have not injured. They do not know the use of guns." Niaz Beg was governor of Yarkand under the Amban, by whom all orders were issued to Niaz Hakim, who saw them carried out. Niaz Hakim is the man who has had all outsiders turned out of the country. "He is afraid of the Chinese," says the writer of the letter," and they of him. Niaz Hakim could turn out the Chinese in a few hours if he wished. He will do so when he is certain no reenforcements are coming for them. In the whole of Kashgaria there are not more than 7,000 troops (Chinese)-5,000 in Kashgar, 600 in Yarkand, 200 in Khotan, and the rest

in other towns."

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Intelligence reached the Russian garrison at

VOL. XVIII.-7 A

Naryn, on the 13th of July, that a battle had taken place between the Kashgarian insurgents at Khotan, led by Niaz Beg, and 3,000 Chinese troops from Aksu, resulting in a disastrous defeat of the Chinese. To retrieve the honor of the Green Dragon, the Chinese_commander had dispatched 2,500 troops from Kashgar to Khotan to crush the Mussulman people. A report prevailed at Orenburg in the latter part of October that the Chinese Governor of Kashgar had prohibited commercial dealings with the Russians, and had ordered all Russians within the territory to accept Chinese nationality or leave the country within two weeks.

The occupation of Kashgar by the Chinese was followed by events which seemed to threaten to interrupt the friendly relations which had hitherto existed between China and Russia. The country was thrown into disorder by the change of rule, and the Russians complained that their trade on the frontier was seriously damaged by brigandage, in which they asserted that the Chinese soldiers took part. Russian troops, dispatched to Sharkodeh to restore order, heard when they reached that place that the Chinese bands had threatened to set fire to the artillery depots and powder magazines at Kulja, with a view of depriving the Russians of the power of making war upon them. The sentries were therefore increased, and all the material was removed to places of greater security. To the embarrassments growing out of the state of disorder were added others arising from the continued occupation of Kulja by the Russians. This city and the surrounding districts were taken possession of by the Russians in 1871, in order, they said, to prevent Yakoob Beg, who had just made a successful campaign against the Sungarians, from_advancing upon it. At the same time the Russians gave a solemn pledge to the Chinese Government that they would surrender it as soon as a sufficient Chinese force should have been

brought to it to restore order. The Chinese now claimed that they had fulfilled their part of the engagement, for their army, fresh from victories over Yakoob Beg, was waiting at the frontier for the order to march in and take possession. The Russians showed no haste to evacuate the position, and a part of the Russian press opposed the fulfillment of the promise to restore it. The impression that a disposition had been developed among the Russians against surrendering Kulja is enforced by a remark which Terenijeff made in a book published by him in 1875. In speaking of that position and the expected reconquest of Kashgar by the Chinese, he said: "In view of such a reawakening on the part of the Chinese after their long slumber, our situation in Kulja is becoming very ambiguous, and every ambiguity is injurious to the prestige of a great empire. Thus before long the Russian Government will have definitely to decide the question as to who shall be the future masters of Kulja." The

"St. Petersburg Journal," speaking of this subject in 1878, said: "If Kulja were to be surrendered to China, Russian rule in the eastern part of Central Asia would be undermined. . . . The surrender," it continued, "would be another triumph to England, and the Mantchoos would hold their heads still higher. In fine, Russian influence in Central Asia would be shaken." A diplomatic mission was appointed in August to go to St. Petersburg and negotiate for an adjustment of the differences respecting the frontier and the restoration of Kulja, and to demand the surrender of the fugitive ex

TEMPLE OF HEAVEN, PEKING.

Khan of Kashgar. The chief of the embassy, or Minister Plenipotentiary, was Chunghou, Governor of Moakden, the capital of Mantchooria-the same officer who was dispatched to France in 1870 to explain that the massacres which occurred at Tientsin in that year were not the work, directly or indirectly, of the Chinese Government. He was accompanied by Silun, a Mantchoo, who had been employed during the late trouble as an agent, civil or military, on the northwest frontier. The plenipotentiaries left Tientsin on the 5th of August for Peking, to have an audience with the Emperor. The Russians professed to be ready to retire whenever they should be compensated for the expense which the occupation of the district had occasioned them.

Kulja is a place of considerable strategical and commercial importance, and might be made profitable to its possessor. It forms a wedge into the Chinese territory, and is protected on the north by the Kopkesen and Kuyuk Mountains, and on the south by the Tien-shan range. Few passes cross these natural barriers, and they are capable of being so fortified that they could be made practically unassailable. The Russians holding it would at the same time Occupy an important vantage-ground, either

for an invasion of Kashgar on the south or of Chuguchak on the north. It is the only dis trict occupied by Russia in Central Asia which might be made a source of revenue instead of expenditure to the Government. The soil is fertile and easily tilled, and the mountains are rich in minerals, including iron, copper, and coal of good quality. During the occupation by the Chinese the land produced flourishing crops, and grain, flour, and all articles of food were abundant and cheap. Trade, assisted by the facilities of transport afforded by the river Ili, which runs east and west through the whole

course of the valley, was in a fairly flourishing condition. The Chinese established nine schools in Ili, or New Kulja, from its foundation in 1763, for the children of the garrison, and supplemented them with a college; and they afterward founded 8 school for the study of Russian, with annual examinations in that language, and prizes. The city was in ruins when Mr. Eugene Schuyler visited it in 1873.

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In November it was reported that Sir Thos. Wade, the British Ambassador at Peking, had been instructed to confer with Lord Lytton at Lahore concerning the relations of Russia with China respecting the restoration of Kulja.

The advance of the Chinese armies against the rebellious Sungarians was accompanied by a general destruction of the Mohammedans, with their cattle and other property, in the provinces occupied by them. In this, however, they are said only to have done what the insurgents had done before them; for during the period of their insurrection, from 1861 to 1870, the Mohammedans had exterminated the Chinese in the provinces of Shensi, Kansu, Ili, and Eastern Turkistan.

The northern provinces of China were afflicted during the first six months of 1878 by a famine, which lasted until it was partly alleviated by the rains which began to fall in June. The famine first spread in the fall of 1875, and was caused by the long-continued absence of rain. The drought was a part of the process of desiccation of the plains of Chihli and Shantung, which, having begun long ago in the table-lands of Central Asia, has now reached the densely populated northern prov inces of the empire. Mr. Frederick H. Balfour, of Cavendish Square, London, who had been in constant communication with the famine

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stricken districts, in February, 1878, described the condition there by saying that the people were "dying by thousands upon thousands. Women and girls and boys are openly offered for sale to any chance wayfarer. When I left the country, a respectable married woman could be easily bought for six dollars, and a little girl for two. In cases, however, where it was found impossible to dispose of their children, parents have been known to kill them sooner than witness their prolonged sufferings, in many instances throwing themselves afterward down wells, or committing suicide by arsenic. Corpses lay rotting by the highway, and there was none to bury them. As for food, the population subsisted for a long time on roots and grass; then they found some nourishment in willow-buds, and finally ate the thatches off their cottages. The bark of trees served them for several months, and last July I received specimens of the stuff the unhappy creatures had been by that time reduced to. The most harmless kind was potato-stalks, tough, stringy fibers, which only the strongest teeth could reduce to pulp, and which entirely defied all my attempts at deglutition. The other description of 'food'—I hardly expect credence, but I have seen it myself-was red slate stone. It appears that this substance, when rolled about in the mouth and chewed, will eventually split into small splinters, which can be swallowed after practice. To such frightful extremities have the famine-stricken people in China been put.' At the end of December, 1877, the famine region in the province of Shansi was estimated to include a population of nearly ten millions needing relief. The foreign residents, the Christian missionaries, and the Government engaged in undertakings for the relief of the suffering; societies were formed to collect money and grain for the sufferers; provision was made for the collection and accommodation in places of refuge of persons who wandered from their homes; and the people of Europe and America were invited to help. Early in February a decree was published granting postponements of taxation in many hundred townships of the province of Shantung, in consequence of the suffering experienced through "flood, drought, locusts, alkalization of the land," etc. It was stated in April that the largest number of victims and the earliest victims to the famine had been opium-smokers. Multitudes of starving people were flocking to Tai-Yuen-fu, the capital of Shansi, and a daily mortality of nearly 400 was reported in the city. Many died from sheer starvation, others from repletion after long fasting, many from the intense cold; and some were eaten by wolves. The distress in northern Honan was quite as grievous at the opening of the spring.

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The severity of the famine and the urgency of the appeals for help awakened public sympathy abroad, and subscriptions were opened and liberally sustained in the principal cities

of Europe and the United States. The foreign residents and the missionaries residing in China, particularly the English residents and missionaries, were made the agents for distributing the relief, and did such evident service to the suffering people as to direct general attention to their benevolent work, and call forth expressions of appreciation and gratitude. The Viceroy of the province of Chihli accepted the invitation of the British consul at Tientsin to dine with him on her Majesty's birthday-the first instance of the kind recorded-proposed the health of the Queen, and in a courteous address referred with feeling to the efforts which had been made by foreigners to relieve the distress. The Viceroy of Shansi addressed to Mr. Forrest, the English consul at Tientsin, a letter of thanks for what had been done by foreigners in the matter of administering relief; and Mr. Forrest, writing to the committee of the relief fund in Shanghai, said that the distribution of funds, as conducted, would do more really to open China to the English than a dozen wars. In one instance, in the province of Honan, the relief proffered by one of the committees was refused; and in another instance two Chinese district officers, appointed to assist the committee, were detected in stealing from the funds.

A letter was published in November by the British Foreign Office which had been received from the Chinese Government, expressing its thanks to the English in all parts of the world for their subscriptions in aid of the sufferers by the famine, and "for the generous relief afforded by them in time of great calamity." A banquet was given at Hong-Kong to the newly appointed Ambassador to England and France, November 29th. The Ambassador made an address in which he said that the impartial and excellent government given to Hong-Kong had cemented the friendly feeling between England and China, and added that he regarded the friends and enemies of England as the friends and enemies of China. The rains began to fall in June, and continued at intervals through the summer and fall, producing a steady mitigation of the distress.

An edict issued by the Emperor on the 29th of March expressed dissatisfaction at the supineness of his household officers in effecting economies. Prince Kung was ordered to be handed over to the Imperial Court, and the other members of the Grand Council to the Board of Punishments, for the adjudication of penalties, because they had failed to suggest remedies for the existing state of distress. In a later decree these officers were deprived of their rank, but allowed to retain office.

A relief hospital for refugees from the famine at Tientsin, containing four thousand women and children, was burned on the 6th of January. The gates of the yards were locked, preventing the immediate escape of the inmates, and fourteen hundred persons were burned to death. The two deputies who were in charge

of the establishment were degraded and incapacitated from ever holding office again. A report to Parliament by Mr. Baker, of the British consular establishment attached to Mr. Grosvenor's mission, mentions a great increase in the production of opium. Speaking of Yunnan, it says: 66 Of the sole agricultural export, opium, we can speak with some certainty. We were astounded at the extent of the poppy-cultivation both in Sechuan and Yunnan. We first heard of it on the boundary line between Hupei and Sechuan. A few miles south of this spot the most valuable variety of native opium is produced. In ascending the rivers, wherever cultivation existed, we found numerous fields of poppy. Even the sandy banks were often planted with it down to the water's edge; but it was not until we began our land

journey in Yunnan that we fairly realized the enormous extent of its production. With some fears of being discredited, but at the same time with the consciousness that I am underestimating the proportion, I estimate that the poppy fields constitute a third of the whole cultivation of Yunnan." Further on, the report remarks: "We walked some hundreds of miles through poppies; we breakfasted among poppies; we shot wild ducks in the poppies. Even wretched little hovels in the mountains were generally attended by a poppy patch."

Imperial and viceregal edicts appeared from time to time prohibiting the cultivation of the poppy, but, according to a recent report of Mr. Nicholson, the secretary of the British legation at Peking, on the opium trade, they have been in most cases ignored, the only result being an

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increase in the price of the article, consequent upon the necessity of the producer "silencing the officials. But though this has been universally understood and acknowledged, the "Peking Gazette" continues to publish memorials from censors and others on the subject. More earnest attempts have recently been made to punish infractors of the laws, and the Government and people seem to be entering upon another general effort to abolish or curtail the traffic. The Viceroy of the two Kiang provinces recently denounced two Taoutais and two or three district magistrates to the Emperor as inveterate opium-smokers. A decree of punishment was issued against them, and the Viceroy has announced that any officer within his jurisdiction whose personal appearance gives ground for suspicion of his being an opium-smoker will be interrogated, and, if found guilty, will be forthwith im

peached. The capital is said to be the chief center of consumption for the Indian opium which comes to Tientsin. The Viceroy of Nanking has ordered that every house let for opium-smoking be confiscated. The authorities of Soochow have also adopted energetic measures against the proprietors of the shops. The officers of Canton have adopted a licensing system, and, having farmed out the trade to a particular corporation, exact a tax on all the opium prepared and sold to it. The general commanding in Kashgar has destroyed the poppy crops in Kansu and Shensi; and all the fields bordering on the roads south of Moakden hare been destroyed. The Governor of Shansi has forwarded a memorial in which he ascribes many aggravations of the recent famine to the fact that the fertile and irrigated fields were given up to the cultivation of the poppy, while the food crops were consigned to stony and

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