THE FLOWERY KINGDOM.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 4, 24 January 1901, Page 4

THE FLOWERY KINGDOM.

_^___ a BITS OF CHINA OLD AND NEW. THE DEATH ROLL. The Dowager-Countess of Denbigh has been furnishing 1 some of the English papers with details of the sufferings of many missionaries, Sistern, and native Christians in China. An English Sister of Charity at Ningpo writes of news being received from Pekin of the daath of eight missionaries ; two were massacred, and several burned in their churches. Sister Janrias, who is close upon 80 years of age and had spent l."> years in China, being the life and soul of the establishment in which she resided, died after the entrance of the Allied troops. An explosion killed 70 people, amongst them all the little one 1 ? in the Creche. At Kinchiou all the Christians were massacred. Some of the women and children were stripped, tied to trees, aud killed with pitchforks. Mgr. Favier, writing fram Pekin to M. Boscat, says : ' Sixty days of siege. ... I think we have fifteen or twenty thousand martyrs, for hardly any apostatized We must Eay " forward " and not lose heart. I never felt more courage.' A MAIUYB-UISHOP. Everyone who esteems self-sacrifice cannot help admiring the heroism of Bishop Hammer, Vicar-Apostolic of Southern Mongolia, who ha 3 laid down his life for the faith. Bishop Hammer had reached the age of (iO. He was one of the first missionaries who visted Mongolia. Thirty-five years ago he began work there amongst the poor, and his labors were so fruitful that in the course of some time he was created a bishop. A missionary now staying at Soheut, near Brussels— one of the l."> White Fathers of the Congregation of the Immaculate Conception who escaped from Mongolia — has given a moving account of the Bishop's noble but at the same time terrible death. When Christian converts were being massacred around him, he called his missionaries together, and, addressing them, said they must seek safety in flight. As for himself, he was an old man : his days were numbered, and he wished to remain with the native Christians to the end. The missionarießJ begged him to go with them, but he remained firm in his resolution^ A few days afterwards the Boxers broke into his residence and seized him as he was about to say Mass. They took him to the market-place, where hundreds of Christians had already been murdered. There his hands and feet were chopped off ; his body

anointed with greaße, and he waa then burnt alive. Dr. Hammer died as a brave man and a martyr. CIVILISING THE CHINESE. The Weßtern World (says the Cathohc Times) has now some 50,000 international troops in the Celestial Empire, and holds the Pink City in the hollow of its hand. But the Chinese Government has fled, and our generals and diplomatists are kicking their heels in despair. What more can they do ? When the weather is fine, they go out and shoot something— generally a heathen Chinaman. In ihia way iL^y ai.c bu y °prca-''"g W^t-f-rn civilisation and impressing the benighted pagans with a due sense of European power and justice. But auUio of the rcport a thn*- n.r^ rp-sohinrr no make us wonder whether they are acting wisely. If private letters from German soldiers at the front may be believed, deeds are being done in China that will bring the blush of shame on every European's face. When the Kaiser bid his troops goodbye, he iB said to have told them to give •' no quarter " ! They appear to be carrying out his instructions to the letter. One soldier writes of a battle near Pekin : "It was simply slaughter. None were spared, neither woman nor child. It was the purest savagery, unexampled even by Chinamen themselves.' Another say* :" We shoot or cut the throat of every Chinaman we meet, for the people are cunning, and must be prevented from playing any more tricks." The Kaiser has requested that no letters from the front shall be published ; but in vain. They creep into the German papers, and deeply shock the public mind. Cannot Europe execute her vengeance on the real criminals ? If she cannot, let her at any rate determine to spare the innocent. Surely Chinese women and children are guiltless ? TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE OF MISSIONARIES. The band of fifteen White Fathers who have arrived at Scheut, near Brussels, from Mongolia, have endured hardships the severity of which can be compared only with the trials of their brother missionaries whom the Chinese have cruelly put to death. When Bishop Hammer bade them leave their missions in Mongolia, that vast country lying between Thibet and Siberia, they were sorely reluctant to go. It was heartbreaking to abandon even for a time the country where they had labored so earnestly and to say farewell to the good Bishop, but Christians were being butchered day by day, and Dr. Hammer's orders were imperative. They crossed the desert of Gobi, or Shamo, one of them being ill all the while from scarlatina. This desert, which occupies nearly the middle of the high table-land of Eastern Asia, is an immense tract consisting for the most part of loose sand, bare rock and shingle, alternating with firm Band scantily clothed with vegetation. The climate ia extremely cold ; even in July and August snow falls. The journey through the wilderness took 12 days. At Urga the missionaries were reoeived in the kindest manner by M. Van Root, the Russian Consul. By his aid they crossed the Chinese frontier and entered Russia. Then they proceeded to the Trans- Baikal Railway. Whilst they were crossing Lake Baikal the thermometer was at 13 degrees below zero. From Irkutsk they were able to travel in comparative comfort, the train taking them direct to Moscow, but it is astonishing that they have survived the perils and sufferings of the journey. But, like true soldiers of the Cross, they are going back to their missions in a little while and taking a number of recruits with them.