CHINA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume V, Issue 300, 15 September 1855, Page 6

CHINA.

From the Calcutta Morning Chronicle of the 17th April, we extract the following heart-sick-ening details of the execution of the rebels who fell into he hands of the Imperialists after their evacuation of Sunchow. The scene was the Canton execution ground :—" The execution had been fixed for noon ; at half-past eleven, half a dozen men armed with knives, preceded by bearers of rough deal wood boxes, decorated with bloody sides, —these were the coffins. Unconcern was the general appearance of the soldiers and spectators, of whom, altogether, there may have been 150. The day was dull, a fresh breeze from the eastward carrying the stench away from foreigners, who, to the number of a dozen, had obtained admittance to the lop of one of the houses on the farside of the street passing the entrance of this ' field of blood.' At a quarter to twelve o'clock, the batch of ten prisoners arrived speedily followed by the test in smaller quantities. Each prisoner, (having his hands lied behind his back, and labelled on the tail,) appeared to have been thrust down in a wicker basket, over which his chained legs dangled loosely, the body riding uncomfortably, and marked with a long paper tally, pasted 'on a slip of bamboo thrust between the prisoner's jacket and his back. These " man baskets,'" slung with small cords, were carried on bamboos, resting on the shoulders of two men. As the prisoneis arrived, each was made to kneel with his face to the south. In a space of about twenty feet by twelve, we counted as many as seventy, ranged in half a dozen rows. At live minutes to twelve, a white button mandarin arrived, and the two to be first cut in pieces were tied to the crosses. Whilst looking at this frightening process the execution commenced, and twenty or thirty must have been headless before we were aware of it. The only sound to be heard was a honid ' cheep'—' cheep'—' cheep'—as the knives fell. One blow was suilicie.it for each—the beau tumbling between the legs of the victim before it. As the sword falls, the blood-gushing trunk springs forward, falls on the breast, and is still for ever. " In four minutes the decapitation was complete ; and then commenced the barbarity, which to think of only, is sufficiently horribleWith o short sharp knife a slice whs cut out from under each arm. A low suppressed fearful groan from each followed the operation of tbe weapon. Dexterous as butchers, a slice was taken successively by the operators from the calves, tbe thighs, a:'id from each breast. We may suppose, we may hope, that by this time tbe sufferers were insensible to pain ; but they were not dead. The knife was then struck into tbe abdomen, which was ripped up to ibe breast bone ; and the blade twisted round and round as the heart was separated from its holding. Up to this moment, having once yet eyes on the victim under torture, they bad become fixed a:s by fascination, but they could be rivelted no longer, a whirling sensafion ran through the brain, and it was with difficulty we could keep ourselves from falling. But this was not all ; the aslrings were then cut, and the head being tied by the tail to a limb of the cross, was severed from the body, which was then dismembered of

hands and arms, feetund legs separately. After this the mandarins left the ground, to return however, with v man and a woman, the latter, it was said, the wife of one of the rebel chiefs—, the man as a leader of some rank. The woman was cut up in the way we have described; for the man a more horrible punishment was decreed—he was flayed alive. We did not see this but it was witnessed by the Sergeant of the U.S.S., J. P. Kennedy—the cry on the first insertion of the knife across the forehead, and the pulling of the flesh over the eyes, being most horrible."