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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 68, 16 October 1862, Page 7

The Execution of Taeping Prisoners : Sickening Atrocities. —The following account of the brutalities committed on the Taepings by the Imperialists is from the pen of an Englishman who was present in company with both English and Ercnch officers and soldiers, at the exention by discmbowclment of Taeping prisonersl went with the crowd to sec the exention of the Taeping prisoners that had been given up for execution into the hands of the mandarins by English and Ercnch authorities ; or what is the same tiling, they took no measures to prevent the ruthless butchery of those they lent their aid to capture, when horror of horrors, how am I to describe the dreadful scone, or will it ever leave my memory? Amongst those wretches wore young and old of both sexes, of all ages and sizes, from the infant recently born to a man of eighty, tottering on his staff; from the encienie woman to the young maiden from ten to eighteen. The latter were pushed out by the guards among the crowd of ruffians asscmdled and were taken into sheds and by-places and debauched, and again dragged back by the hair of the head to the Chinese guards, to await their turn for execution. Some of them had fainted, and were pulled along the ground to the executioners, who threw them on their backs, tore off their clothes, and ripped them from the lower part of the abdomen to their breasts, which they cut off and dashed with a curse- in their faces. The bowels, as a matter of course, gushed out; but the cut was made in such a way, and so skilfully and with such expertness, that the intestines were seldom injured. After a little time in this state of excessive torture, the executioner thrust his hand into the chest, and tore out the reeking heart, his victim looking him'in the face all the while. A young female, apparently about eight mouths pregnant who never uttered a groan or sigh at all the previous cruelties she had endured from the surrounding mob, had her infant cut out of her womb, and held up in her sight by one of its little bands bleeding and quivering; when at 1

the sight she gave one heart-rending piercing screech that would have awakened pity in a tiger, and after it had been in that state clashed on her breast, she, with a last superhuman effort, released her arms from those holding her down, and clasped her infant to her bleeding heart and died, holding it there with such force that they could not be separated, and were thus thrown together on the pile of other carcasses. Another young woman among the prisoners awaiting her turn to bo disembowelled, with a fine boy ten months old, crowing and jumping in her arms, had him snatched suddenly away from her, and flung to the executioner, who plunged the ruthless knife in his tender breast before his mother’s eyes. Infants but recently born were torn from their mothers’ breasts and disembowelled before their faces. Young strong men were disembowelled, mutilated, and the parts cut otf thrust into their own months, or flung among the admiring and laughing crowd of Chinamen. But no more, I can write no more of these scenes; I can now only regret for ever that I looked on the dreadful sight. I am no longer fit to be a soldier. I have been in many battles during the last twenty years, and in the thickc-r of tiie fight in most of them, where a rage and thirst for carnage is dreadful to reflect on afterwards, but nothing heretofore that I have s-'cn or heard of, or even read of, could be compared to the dreadful cruelty of the disembowelling execution. May God forgive England for the part she is taking in this war, and may the sin of (he enormities she has assisted in perpetrating on (lie defenceless woman, and innocent and helpless child be removed from her door. Ekglakd the Cextrt: op the Earth. —lf wo divide the globe into two hemispheres, accordin' ■ in the maximum extent of land and water in eat g, we arrive at the curious result of designating Enf, land as the centre of the former (or terrene) halo and an antipodal point near New Zealand as tht centre of the aqeons hemisphere. The exacposition in England is not far from the Land’s End ; so that if an observer were then raised to such a height as to descorn at once the half of the globe, he would see the greatest possible extent of land ; if similarly elevated in New Zealand, the greatest possible surface of water.— Quarterly I Reticle.