A Vision: A Poem

456 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

with the thick water of the river —the lifeblood of the kith and kin of

the very men who stood talking there about the dreariest prose of life. And now the dew of slaughter had scarcely waxed stiff, those survivors chatted as though their faces were of marble and their hearts of ice, while the once famished dogs prowled about sated, sleek and fastidious. As soon as the ice seemed broken I asked one smiling individual: "Why do you stay here with the slayers of your relatives and friends ?" "To escape their fate if we can," was the reply. "We may be killed at any time, but while we live we must eat, and for food we have to work." "Were many of your people killed?" I enquired. "Look there," he answered, pointing to the corpses in the vast overground churchyard, "and in the river there are many more. The Russians killed every Chinaman they met. Of them we are in great fear. They never look whether we have crosses or medals; they shoot every one." "You are a Christian then?" I queried. "Yes, a Christian," he eagerly answered. "And I," "And I," chimed in two others. Ten minutes' further conversation, however, brought out the fact that they were Christians not for conscience sake, but for safety, and they were sorely afraid that they were leaning on a broken reed. The upshot of what they had to tell me was that the Europeans, mainly the Russians, looked upon them all as legitimate quarry, and hounded them down accordingly. They and theirs they declared, had been shot in skirmishes, killed in sport and bayonetted in play.

The following is a discription of a massacre of three hundred coolies at Taku.

Some three hundred hard-working coolies eked out a very cheerless existence by loading and unloading the steamers of all nations which touched at Taku. For the convenience of both sides they all cooped themselves up in one boat, which served them as a permanent dwelling. When times were slack they were huddled together there like herrings in a barrel, and when work was brisk they toiled and moiled like galley slaves. Thus they managed to get along doing harm to no man and good to many. The attack of the foreign troops upon Taku was the beginning of their end. Hearing one day the sharp reports of rifle shots, this peaceable and useful community was panic-stricken. In order to save their dreary lives they determined to go ashore. Strong in their weakness, and trust-