February 19. The annual audience with the foreign ministers took place with most scant ceremony and in a shabby apartment. This was done with the direct purpose of insulting them, but none remonstrated.
February 23. A French priest from Tientsin informs me that all that district is pervaded by the Boxers, who openly avow they are drilling to come to Peking and drive out and exterminate all foreigners.
February 25. Several thousand armed Boxers have possession of the German railway building at Kaomi in Shantung, and state their purpose is to drive out the foreigner.
February 28. Yuan Shih Kai, Governor of Shantung, has sent a private messenger, an ex-drillmaster in his army corps, to Baron von Ketteler, the German minister, to say he will disperse the Boxers at Kaomi and restore quiet.
March 14. The man who obtained for the British syndicate the concession known as the Peking syndicate’s Shansi concessions to mine and build railways, was arrested for assisting foreigners to obtain concessions in China. Upon Sir Claude MacDonald’s demanding his release, the Empress promptly sentenced him to imprisonment for life. This will deter others from helping foreigners in any capacity.
March 15. United States Minister Conger, having protested against the Empress using Yu Hsien, ex-governor of Shantung, in any province where American interests are great, is greatly displeased to learn to-day that, so far from heeding, the Empress has actually appointed him Governor of Shansi, in which are not only a number of American missionary stations, but the interests of the Peking syndicate.
ANCIENT ASTRONOMICAL INSTRUMENTS
These peculiar instruments, which are of great astronomical merit, were made during the reign of Kublai Khan, A. D. 1264. An especial interest attaches to this illustration, on account of the attempt of the Germans to remove these instruments to Berlin, and the protest made against it by General Chaffee, of the U. S. Army. The engraving shows the instruments just as they were used for hundreds of years, before they were taken apart for removal to Europe.