No description of this place can give an idea of it as it exists to-day. To turn to Doré’s engravings in Dante’s “Inferno” would help. Every tree in the Fu, and there are many, has been stripped of leaves by these starving people; the smaller branches pulled and the bark chewed off. Diseased or not, these wretched people have been forced to remain here all together, as there is no other place for them. Carrion crows and dogs are killed and dragged to the Fu by sentries whenever possible, and these ravenous creatures pull the flesh from their bones and eat it without a pretence of cooking. Every morning when the two horses are shot at the slaughter-house, for distribution to the messes, half of the inedible parts are eaten with relish by these starving people. The heat is intense, the ground in the Fu is brown and hard, the children are naked, and the adults wear little, but one and all are enveloped with the agony of relentless, hideous starvation. The white rice which we have used in the compound has been finished, and we now use the yellow or uncleaned rice, which is very sandy and gritty, and which even the coolies in ordinary times would never think of using. It is made into curries or eaten plain, but one has to swallow it in spoonfuls without closing one’s teeth on it, or it would be too much like chewing sand. To-day a letter came from the Yamen saying that Li Hung Chang had arrived in Shanghai, and that he would soon begin peace negotiations by telegraph with the Ministers in Peking. Not a word was mentioned about our leaving for Tien-tsin, nor an apology for the continued sniping at night, and the occasional attacks which make us realize the lie that we are being “tenderly cared for and watched over by the Empress.” Apropos of this clever old statesman, Li Hung Chang, the story is told of him that when, after some months of hard work and successful diplomacy, he had completed the terms of the treaty of Shimonoseki with the Japanese after the China-Japan War of 1894, although the Chinese had been whipped, Li had procured a most advantageous treaty for his Empress, and while the ink was hardly dry on the document he procured an audience with T’si An, and after kowtowing the entire length of the audience-hall in great abasement, he finally reached her august presence and told her of the successful termination of the work she had entrusted to him.