CHINA.

Southland Times, Issue 614, 4 January 1867, Page 3

CHINA.

- (From the Overland Mail, Nov. 1.) ! News from Corea has arrived to the effect that the Prench have initiated proceedings to teach the Coreans that murdering foreigners is an unlawful pastime. The Prench Admiral has sailed with his squadron to the Corea, but active operations will be deferred i until after the winter. A sad tale of ■ Corean barbarity accompanies this intelligence. The master and crew of an American schooner, with two English gentlemen, have been roasted to death by order of the King or his father — some 1 accounts say the latter — the unhappy ' victims having been tied down in their berths, and the ship then set on fire. We may suppose that some notice will be taken of this by the British Government. Whether lawfully there or not, their semi-barbarous murderers have no shadow of excuse for this atrocity, and it is to be hoped that prompt and effectual punishment will be inflicted — not a pecuniary one only, let us trust, as there is but too good reason to fear will be the case where the lives of British subjects are concerned. The Becorder informs us of another daring act of piracy committed between Ningpo and Shanghai. It appears that two valuable laden junks, while off Nanko, on the night of the Bth inst., were attacked and captured by pirates, and that the Lorcha, tender to the Chinese gunboat Paou Shun, in endeavoring to render assistance to the junks, was beaten off with the loss of five men killed and two dangerously wounded, who are now lying in the Ningpo Hospital. On the afternoon of the 9th the Paou Shun left I Ningpo in "pursuit of the pirates. The recent distress which has existed in the city of Poo-chow, and the continued highprice of rice, have not been without effect on the Chinese authorities. With a view to the development of Poochow trade, and the establishment of a new branch of industry, it is the intention of the Viceroy pf the province to introduce the culture of the silkwork and to plant mulberry trees on all the public ground in this neighborhood. One of the most disastrous fires with which Hong Kong has been visited since the great conflagration in 1851, took place on Tuesday night. It commenced about half-past six p.m., in an unoccupied house opposite the British Hotel, Queens-road west, and gradually extended thence to the Praya, and in a westerly direction as far as Mr Biach's timber-yard, the whole mass of houses — over 200 in number — i being completly gutted. Ten cent pieces are, according to a contemporary, being coined daily at the mint. Nearly a million have been turned out already and preparations are being made for an issue of pieces of twenty cents each. Porty thousand is, we have been informed, the number of the smaller coins the mint machinery is capable of turning out daily, and from eighteen to twenty per cent, is the estimated profit on the manufacture of this class of coin, which is not, intrinsically of the value for which it passes current by law. Two men engaged in the Lubra Piracy have turned up at Macao, and have proceeded to Canton, with the detectives, to endeavor to identify some more of the scoundrels. We. regret to hear of the loss, in Gaspar Straits, of the tea ship Ellen Boger, a well-known clipper in the China trade. The casualty occurred on the voyage from Choo-chow to London, with a full cargo of tea. The 20fch Begiment has been ordered to the Cape, and is to be relieved by the 73rd Begiment, now in England. Captain Noelke, of the Prussian threemasted schooner Vampyr, recently from the Soloo group, situated between Borneo and the Philippines, has brought from the Soloo Sultan, a communication, in the shape of a large document, enveloped in silk. What this epistle purports we, of course, are not prepared to state, but it is supposed to convey a proposition to King William I. to assume the powers of royalty over the Sultan's domains, inasmuch as the Solooneese are tired of the control at present exercised by the Spaniards over them. The document in question is to be transmitted to Berlin. Captain Noelke has in his possession several large pearls of more or less value from the said islands, the banks in the vicinity of which are well-known to contain numbers of those precious productions. J _ _____