"The foundation of the 'Boxers' can be traced to one man, Yü Hsien, who, when Prefect of Tsao-chau, in the south-west corner of Shan-tung, organized a band of men as local militia or trainbands. For them he revived the ancient appellation of 'I-Ho-Ch'üan,' the Patriotic Harmony Fists. Armed with long swords, they were known popularly as the Ta-tao-huei, or Big Knife Society. After the occupation of Kiao-chau Bay the society grew in force, the professed objects of its members being to oppose the exactions of native Catholics and to resist further German aggression. They became anti-Christian and anti-foreign. They became a religious sect, and underwent a fantastic kind of spiritual training of weird incantations and grotesque gymnastics, which they professed to believe rendered them impervious to the sword and to the bullet of the white man. Three deities they specially selected as their own—namely, Kwanti, the God of War and patron deity of the present dynasty, Kwang Chéng-tze, an incarnation of Laotze, and the Joyful Buddha of the Falstaffian Belly. They made Taoist and Buddhist temples their headquarters. Everywhere they declared that they would drive the foreigner and his devilish religion from China. To encourage this society its founder, Yü Hsien, was in March, 1899, appointed by the Throne Governor of Shan-tung. In four years he had risen from the comparatively humble post of Prefect to that of the highest official in the province." _Peking Correspondence London Times, October 13, 1900._ Sir Robert Hart, an English gentleman who had been in the service of the Chinese government at Peking for many years, administering its maritime customs, is the author of an account of the causes and the character of the Boxer movement, written since its violent outbreak, from which the following passages are taken: