Hearing no word from the Corean Christians during the next two years, it was determined to send succor. For this perilous mission, a young Chinese priest named Jacques Tsiu, twenty-four years old, of good bodily strength and pronounced piety, whose visage closely resembled a Corean’s, was selected. Fortified with extraordinary ecclesiastical powers, he left Peking in February, 1794, and in twenty days arrived on the neutral ground. There he met the Christians, who urged him to wait nearly a year, on account of the vigilance of the sentinels. This he did among his fellow Christians in Shing-king, and on the night of December 23, 1794, crossed the Yalu, reached Seoul in safety, and at once began his labors. All went on well till June, when, through a treacherous visitor, the official spies were put upon his track. In spite of his removal to another place, three Christians—two who had guided him to Seoul, and one an interpreter, who in sublime self-sacrifice tried to pass himself off as the Chinaman—were seized and tortured. With arms and legs dislocated, and knees crushed, they refused to betray their brother in the faith, and were put to death in prison, June 18. The three headless and battered trunks were flung in the Han River, which for the first, but not for the last time was streaked with martyr blood. Meanwhile, the Chinese priest was at first hidden for many days under a wood-pile by a Christian lady, who, having gained over her mother-in-law, sheltered him in her house, where, protected by the law which forbids a noble’s dwelling to be invaded, he remained three years. In September, 1796, he wrote a letter in Latin to the Bishop of Peking, and the native Christians writing in Chinese, the copies on silk were sewed into the garments of two believers, who, having bought positions as servants in the embassy, arrived in Peking, January 28, 1797. Among other things Jacques proposed that the King of Portugal should send an embassy to the King of Chō-sen to obtain a treaty of friendship, and allow the residence of physicians, astronomers, and scientific men in Corea. Though no Portuguese envoy was sent out to treat with the court of Seoul, [17] a foreign vessel appeared in the autumn of this same year, off the eastern coast, floating the British flag. It was the sloop of war Providence, carrying sixteen guns, commanded by Captain W. R. Broughton, who cast anchor in Yung-hing Bay, October 4th, and touched at Fusan. [18] One of the natives who visited the ship was suspected by the government and arrested; though the English visitors were ignorant of the existence of Christians in Corea, and the local magistrates were equally uninformed as to the difference in religion and nationality between Britons and Portuguese.