MAIL SKETCHES IN CHINA BY A LADY.—No. II.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 299, 20 November 1874, Page 3

MAIL SKETCHES IN CHINA BY A LADY.—No. 11.

. A SHANGHAI BIOT. Just as I.ha'd got so. far on yesterday, • I by seeing L—' arrive. I had some friends '"coming to spend the afternoon with me, and, hearing the carriage, I expected them —and. there ' :w"as L— . He informed me that no friends j were to come, and that there was a grand riot going on in the French side of the settlement, and it was thought safest'for i( me to go in, and not stay so far away from help. So the' consul and several others advised. L : to go and fetch me, and all other valuables, into the settlement before dark. I did not feel, a bit frightened but rather unwilling to leave our little sweet place in the;country. However, there . was no time ' to hesitate, for L ———r; was. in a great hurry to get back". So I" called the boys; set to work, packed up everything I felt afraid , of, got out the close carriage, and filled it v\p-ith- them. ■ Then, giving the servants strict charge to lock the house securely up, r L —r and I set off in the open trap—the goods" and chattels following. Arid then I had time to ask all about.the 'row. I .had/seen andheard something about, it before, and I had been hearing shots all morning, -but did not take any notice of them. It seemed all quiet,.and all round the people were working in thei'r_fields quite peacefully. This £ heard the night before. We had friends calling on us, who .had walked out,- and they old us that there •was a row on'the French side over some . graves; but no one-thought anything about it, for rows are common enough. As I was driven in, I ,was favored-with a true and full account;..and this is.it : The ground where the graves were really belonged to the French, and 'they liad bought it on purpose t6 convert it into a road; but the purchase r money, t:wallowing up the fund devoted to the road, the making of it was delayed for .a time. When they came to mate it, they found that, in the interval, a number of Chinese had been buried in the ground. Observing this, they posted notices, requesting the graves to be removed; and a second notice was put up, -after a time, requesting them to be removed within a certain time, else the road would be made over >them. They were'.very, .fair. -The time named elapsed, and a week more, and still the graves were.there. Not only so, but fresh graves' had- bteen made ; and, on examination, these were found to be shams—nothing was buried in them. So the French engineer; got his coolies together, and set to work last week. But for days no work could be done for the, crowds that kept collecting and threatening the men. At last, on Sunday, the crowds got very great,'.and began to stone happened to pass. No men of course were at work, and the crowds had not them to vent their spleen upon. Thousands collected, and showed a very threatening attitude.: The French policemen—O.hinese by about' twenty called together (armed with short:swords arid, muskets), and made patrol the "place where the crowds jvere 'assembling," which is an open place between the French houses and the city wall. About 5. o'clock the crowds got very riotous, ! and began to throw stones, and smash the windows near. By some unlucky chance, the road engineers house was one of the. nearest. When he appeared in the verandah to try and stop the stonirig, he was greeted with loud yells, and was made tlie butt of the whole fury of the mob. Soon they smashed in his door, dragged him out, and battered and dashed: him about until he. died. They next dragged his wife out by the hair of the head., and pounded her —leaving her for dead, as they supposed.(She is supposed now- to be going tq. get - round.) "The three children they pitched right out of the'upper Windows, amd afr 'ter'wards knocked -and kicked them about, live ;-'one 'they-say : must die. The r -,Krob' crowded;:iiit6 the house;, smashed .every thing, and then fired the place,, and. proceeded by . the,- back yard: to the next .house. -Here lives a' Miss M'Lean, a missionary lady. She called out to them that whatever quarrel they had with the roadman had nothing to do with her, and begged theiri-to leave. But they smashed in her d'oors, ; dragged lier into the mire, jumped ori- ; her, and beat her frightfully: so much, so, fchat she 1 ; is not expected to live. :Shb, and all the unfortunate victims are in the general hos- • pita!. But long before all this was done, the French- police had begun to use tljieir weapons freelyarid-, as soon as' the fire of the burning building showed..itself, all the fire' alarms .in vth'e whole settlement sounded... /(TkesS iwfe-,heard'.ouitsat'-Pis—--arid, .on; going ; to : .the ; ; we, saw -the'; < smcuke,. and .thought it.-was.nierely;au.orr .dinaryifijre'.);. ' j£re§ • fire, 'ft* wits'*.no'common one. got into the midst of a regular, fignt, aqd ; , ftfetween'iMm'-arid'the police, f good many, ring-leil'd6rs ; j were captured', and some-..Chinese toereishieit' down. The fire was put out; and.for a . .time (he mob became quieter, The volunteers were called out, and sailors were landed from the various meu-of- war. The presence of an armed force so strong seemed to awe tlie mob for n time. But at.nine at night iresh crowd's' seemed gathering, and reports spread abroad that they meant to burn the-whole French settlement. More sailors, with .cannon, &c., were Jandi-id, and every preparation made. The French ladies' safely .was; se-cured—-many bfcinjt'bYJuglit*Uruvii" to the English all wefe in readiness

for the onset. All this happened *v!uie « e were spending a quiet eventrvgar,:F - —, not four miles distant. Our, friends -w-!u> were with us had come out the English road, and had merely heard early in the afternoon that there was a row; and, rows of a small- kind being common enough, we .never thought anything of it, but sat talking in the garden long after we had heard the fire alarms, and had seen the smoke. About dark we went in to dine, and, while in my room, I casually looked towards the settlement, and there I saw ' a., b'rigllt red glare,. which grew brighter every moment. Presently I heard shots, but fancied it. must be the noise of the fire, as fires often began in firework shops, and we hear, the powder and combustibles exploding like guns. I called" to the others to come arid see the fire, which looked a huge one, and lighted up the whole country. We all thought the noise more like guns than flrewor rs. However, our dinner was getting cold ; so we went down stairs, and soon forgot all about it. our friends left soon after, and, when we retired to rest, we still saw a bright giare (as if from the remains of a fire, and heard a good deal of noise ; but-, thinking nothing of it, we shut up our little dwelling,^and went to bed', and slept soundly till the morning. So little did I think of it, that: I had forgotten almost all about it, until L —-- unexpectedly returned so early. But. to return to the story. It seems that after" dark the - moi?e.. dense an.d;*uproarious, and were very threatening in aspect They were armed with,-all kinds of weaponsflaming bamboos, • &c., and they piled straw and stuff round the houses, and set fire to the heaps, and soon the bright fire which we had seen broke- out, and soon some fighting began, and bye and bye' there was a regular skirmish. The volunteers and sailors were, however, soon victorious, and the crowds broken into pieces. The' fire was stopped by pulling down some houses, and blowing up others. When the fight was over, many of the natives were prisoners, and twelve were found dead. A few of the foreigners were hurt, but none killed, though one or , two aro-mdanger. The Hospital is full. Most of those badly hurt are French. So far, during the wliole course of the disturbance only five or six foreigners are dead, but:several are in a dangerous state, The quarrel was entirely with, the French. Even during the moments- when the excitement was greatest, the Chinese asked foreigners whether they. JFreneh or English, and urged' the English to get out of the way. ...They would-not allow them to interfere, yet did riot wish to hurt them. Several of the people in our hou,-:e were warned by the Chinese to go away, as they would not hurt any English intentionally. The missionary lady, Miss M'Lean, was left alone, and all the crowd drew away from her house as soon as they knew she was not French. By one on Monday morning the ; riot" was pretty fully subdued; but the guards were kept up, and the sailors were detained .on shore the whole of Monday. When we neared.the settlement we were met by crowds of Chinese, with packhorses,wlieelbarrows, &c., laden with, furniture, and other articles. The rioters had pro* claimed that they would burn every French house and every building in the settlement. So all the natives who were peacefully inclined moved away'. It is supposed that over a thousand families moved to the Chinese quarters on the outskirts of the English and. American settlements. We got in all right; and, I excepting that the people "were mostly armed, there seemed to me no difference. The. volunteers and settlers were kept under arms all night. There was a little skirmishing, but nothing to speak of; and now the mandarins say the people are all returning to their work. The mandarins say also that they are very 1 much grieved at what has happened—but we never .know how much of their grief is. pretended. The Chinese Government will have to refund all loss through the destruction of -property, and to compensate all who have been hurt or injured. The gJieatest"Tndignation is felt against the French Consul-General. • •This morning he has issued a proclamation in Chi- 1 nese assuring them jthat he has now given up. all intention of making the road which was the cause of all the quarrel. This he had posted on all the city gates, and in conspicuous places.... He never would consult with his brother consuls about it. Indeed, a meeting of consuls was called for the forenoon to deliberate about what should be done. But this craven-hearted fellow,. hearing rumors that more rows were meditated, at once gave up the whole thing; and, as the affair was wholly French, none, of the others can interfere, and put a stop to this mad : folly. He never, even consulted them. ' During the riot'on Sunday,- he shut himself into his house, arid thought only of his own safety; He solicited the aid of the other consuls, of the firemen and volunteers, and all the time he kept a big guard round himself; and now, after all, he gives up the point' in dispute, and . the mob have got what they Granted. It is a bad thing, and in future we may expect serious rows about everything.. Once having given way to a ,m'ob-, there will be iriobs in abundance,- and fire,-too, whenever there is any dispute. The natives have been particularly troublesome of late, and now was a good chance of teaching them a lesson. As it is, they will say that the foreigners aire afraid of them'; and will be all the more emboldened. " v ~