THE FLOWERY KINGDOM.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 48, 29 November 1900, Page 4

THE FLOWERY KINGDOM.

BITS OF CHINA, OLD AND NEW.

AN INCIDENT OK THK CHINKSE WAR. Pierre T,oti, the celebrated French author, writes the following in the Outlook — h In the sinister yellow country of the Extreme Orient, during the worst period of the war, our boat, a heavy ironclad, was stationed for weeks at her post in the blockade m a bay on the coast. With the neighboring country, with its impossible green mountains and its rice fields like velvet prairies, we had almost no communication, The inhabitants of the village or the woodn stayed at home defiant or hostile. An overwhelming heat descended upon us from ii dull sky, which was nearly always gray and veiled with curtains of lead. One morning during my watch the steersman came to me and Enid : 1 There is a sampan, captain, that has just come into the bay which s-eemß to be trying to speak to üb.' 1 Ah, who is in it '' Before replying lie looked again through his glass. 'There is, capfiin, a kind of priest, Chinese, or I don't know what, who is seated alone in the stern.' The sampan advanced over the sluggish, oily, warm water without haste and without noise. A yellow-faced young girl, clad in a black dress, stood erect and paddled the boat, bringing- us 'this ambiguous visitor, who wore the costume, the head.dress and the round spectacles of the priests of Annam, but whose beard and whose astonishing face were not at all Asiatic. He came on board and addressed me in French, speaking in a dull and timid way. ' I am a missionary,' he said, ' from Lorraine, but I have lived for more than thirty years in a village six hours' march from here, in the country, where all the people have been converted to Christianity. I wish to speak to the commandant and ask for aid from him. The rebels are threatening us, and are already very near. All my parishioners will be massacred, it is certain, if some one does not come promptly to our aid.' Alas 1 the commandant was obliged to refuse aid. All the men and guns that we had had been sent to another place and there remained on board just enough Bailors to guard the vessel ; truly we could do nothing for those poor parishioners ' over there.' ' They must be given up as lost. The overwhelming noonday hottt had arrived, the daily torpor that suspended all life. The littlcjkmpaa and the young girl had returned to land, disappearing in / the unhealthy vegetation on the bank, and the missionary had, naturally enough, stayed with us a little taciturn, but not recriminative. ' The poor man did not appear brilliant during the luncheon he shared with us. He had become such an Annamite that any conversation with him seemed difficult. And to think that, without doubt, we should have to keep with us for several months this unforseen guest that heaven had eeut us ! It was without enthusiasm, I assure you, that one of us went to him to announce on the part of tho commandant : ' They have prepared a room for you, father. It goes without Baying that you will be one of u.i until the day when we can land you in a safu place.' He did not ee^m to understand. ' But I am only waiting until nightfall to ask you to send me to the end of the bay in a small boat. Before night you can surely have me put on shore, can you not ." he asked uneasily. 1 Landed ! And what will you do on land ?'