Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 June 1895 — TORN DOWN BY MOBS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TORN DOWN BY MOBS.

CHENG-TU MISSIONS WRECKED BY HEATHEN. Reports of Rioting Confirmed, bnt It la Possible the Missionaries Escaped —Other Places Threatened—Terre Haute Fears Saloon Interests. Viceroy Liu Blamed. Shanghai advices say the report of the total destruction of the missions Of Ching-Tu-Fu, Iviating and Yoachohu. has been confirmed. The local officials refused protection to the missionaries until the mob had completed the work of demolishing the buildings. The mission stations at other places have been threatened. About twenty adults, besides a number of children, took refuge at Ching-Tu-Fu and Yamen. Viceroy Liu is blamed for the affair. Cheng-Tu is the capital city of the province of Se-Chuen, the westernmost and largest province of China. It borders on Thibet, and has a population of 35,000,000 people. Chang-Tu is the largest of seventeen cities numbering over 100.000 inhabitants each. The city is situated in a hilly region, aud the country around it is poorly cultivated. The province is seamed by mountain ranges, an 4 only a few valleys of the 200,000 square miles embraced in the province are susceptible of a high degree of cultivation. The people of the hilly aud mountainous district, including the region around Cheng-Tu, are semi-barbarous. They kept up tribal organizations, and not only are warlike, but bitterly opposed to foreigners. Cheng-Tu is from 800 to 1.000 miles from the seacoast, and the whole proviuce of Se-Chuen is inaccessible by water except in the rainy season, when the river Yang-tse-

Kiang, in the southern part of the province, is navigable for local traffic. Wu-Chang, the point to which a French gunboat is said to have gone, is in the province of Hupeh, adjoining Se-Chuen on the east. It is a city of 800,000 inhabitants, at the head of navigation for seagoing vessels on the Yang-tse-Kiang, and is 600 miles and more from the scene of the reported massacre of Christians. Not Reported in Washington. The Chinese legation in Washington has received no information ns to the reported massacre of missionaries. It is stated at the legation that Cheng-Tu is a large city in the interior of China. The people are far removed from the centers of foreign commerce such as Canton and Shanghai. Recently, however, by the treaty of peace with Japan, the interior city was one of several places to be opened to foreigners and foreign commerce. This, it is explained, hns agitated the people, who lived by themselves from time immemorial. The missionaries are the only foreigners who have heretofore settled at Cheng-Tu. Their number is not known. It is said, however, that the number of missionaries, including their families, in the entire province of Se-Chuen, of which Cheng-Tu is the capital, must be less thun 100, including all nationalities.

MAP SHOWING CHING-TU AND SURROUNDING TERRITORY.