"The fact is, the insurgents let us know immediately that they professed Protestant Christianity and I believe sincerely, and many of them intelligently so; nor can there be a doubt of their Protestantism, for their expression is characteristic; they always said -as also the imperialists in speaking of them -that they were worshippers of Jesu, in contradistinction to that of worshippers of Tien-chu.

"They circulate tracts, not copied from missionary tracts, but drawn from the Scriptures by themselves, and written in a far superior style of Chinese than that current among, or perhaps possible to, foreigners.

"They are iconoclasts, and destroy every vestige of idol worship.

"They adopt the ten Commandments, translated by themselves, to which they have appended annotations; thus, they state under the seventh commandment, that smoking opium is always associated with the sin mentioned there, and must be discontinued.

"They behead for smoking opium, and bamboo for smoking tobacco.

"They said they had the whole of our Scriptures, but we only saw Genesis. I gave them two New Testaments in Chinese, and a naval and military Bible. This was, of course, in English. On the occasion of my giving the New Testament the first time, there was no one present who could interpret, but the chief opened it, and, after reading two or three passages, showed by his manner that he understood what it was, and valued it; and, on the interpreter returning to my cabin, I told him he was to present it to his Prince. He rose and made several bows,

and otherwise expressed his thanks for the present.

"They are very severe for any infraction of morals, and separate the sexes to prevent improprieties of any kind. They hold an open court, confronting litigants—not so in the old Chinese courts, where they nearly always have recourse to torture. They style the army the Holy Army,' and the name of Nanking they have changed into that of the 'Holy City.' They style each other ‘brethren,' and they invariably called us foreign brethren.'

"I rode with an interpreter about twelve miles, and must have passed twenty thousand people carrying rice, furniture, &c., and the interpreter assured me that he only heard one expression that could offend the nicest ear, whereas one can hardly move as many paces elsewhere without hearing many-indeed, I am told the very children use the grossest expressions, in their ordinary play.

"It was obvious to the commonest observer that they were practically a different race. They had Gutzlaff's edition of Genesis, and the person they spoke most of was a Dr. Lobson. This, we suppose, was either Dr. Hobson, of Canton, or Dr. Lobside, also a medical missionary. The first belongs to the London mission, the other to the Rhenish mission. Perhaps the latter is the more probable, as he was attached to the same society as Gutzlaff, and is said to have itinerated in Kouang-see, where the movement took its rise." (It afterwards turned out that the Rev. Mr. Roberts was the person alluded to.)

"On inquiring, of an imperialist belonging

EXTRACTS OF A LETTER FROM THE REV. WM. ELLIS TO THE REV. DR. TIDMAN, DATED MAURITIUS, SEPTEMBER 9TH, 1853.

"MY DEAR BROTHER,

"I wrote to the Directors by the 'Calcutta,' which sailed for England, via the Cape, on the 5th inst. As that vessel touched here so soon after our own arrival,* and remained here but a short time, I could do little more than refer, very briefly, to the chief incidents of our voyage to Madagascar and the advantages already secured......

"No small degree of perplexity and difficulty has arisen from the almost utter impossibility of gaining, for some time after our arrival in Mauritius, correct information on many points of great importance, or discovering the truth or falsehood of the strange and conflicting rumours which, to the very day of our departure from the colony, were, in general circulation. As specimens, I just mention that about the time of our arrival, the death of the Queen was confidently reported on the authority of tidings brought by a vessel direct from the Island; about the same time we were also informed, on the evidence of parties said to have come from the Island, that the Prince had been required, and had consented, to renounce his profession of Christianity, as the condition of his receiving the crown. These and similar rumours were in some instances accompanied by such details as induced us to suppose there must be some foundation for them; yet we never found the slightest reason to doubt the trust-worthiness of the native Christians here, and after a

Namely, the return of Messrs. Ellis and Cameron from Tamatave to Mauritius, which occurred on the 2nd September.-Ed. Miss, Chron.

very careful investigation of all the letters they had received I believe their veracity unimpeachable; but they were liable to be misled through the defective information of the Christians in the Island, who sent the accounts to them, or the misrepresentations of parties unfriendly to their objects.

"One of the first cautions we received in Tamatave, from a valued Christian brother, was to be guarded in what we said to parties who might appear anxious to be informed on religious subjects. And although it was some time after our arrival there before we attained anything like a correct, though exceedingly limited, acquaintance with the state of the people, we found that parties there, from whom our Christian friends in Mauritius were in the habit of receiving communications, were very unsafe correspondents; and that others, in whom, in the Colony, confidence had been placed as friends of the Christians, had at Tamatave not only frustrated the efforts of the Christians in Mauritius to serve their brethren in Madagascar, but had been the means of placing the latter in circumstances of increasing peril. I consider the discovery of this as one important advantage secured by our visit.

"At Tamatave, also, we found rumours in very general circulation, though as utterly unfounded as any we had before heard, and causing great mischief and suffering among the people. The whole community had been exceedingly agitated by a report, said to have been put in circulation three or four months previous to our arrival, by a foreign resident of long standing and considerable influence, (a Frenchman,) to the effect that a hostile fleet was coming to

attack them, and take possession of their country. In consequence of this report the government had despatched a large body of troops to the neighbourhood, and such had been the haste with which they had been sent, the fatigue of the service, the want of proper supplies, and the effect of the climate, for it was in the unhealthy season, that numbers of the men, and, it was said, one fourth of the officers, had died. Tamatave seemed to us comparatively empty, and, on inquiring the cause, we were told that the people had been ordered to Ivondro, a place about nine miles distant, where great numbers were still employed in erecting a new fort or battery, as an additional defence against the threatened invasion.

"We reached Tamatave on the 18th of July. The port captain, or harbour master, an officer of the twelfth honour, who had been in the embassy sent to England and France, and spoke in English, came on board, accompanied by several inferior officers. After making the usual inquiries as to the ship, crew, officers, passengers, and objects of the voyage, during which a considerable degree of reserve was manifested, they returned. By them we sent our letters to the Queen and the officers, with a note to the governor, requesting him to forward them as early as possible to the capital. The memorial, &c., from the merchants at Mauritius were also delivered to an officer sent to receive them.

Early the next morning, a white flag on the beach intimated that a communication from the government awaited us. Our captain and mate went on shore, and found that permission was given to take off some supplies for the ship. They informed us, on their return, that the officers wished to see us on shore. We landed shortly afterwards, and found two of the chief officers of the place, and numbers of the people, on the beach. Some of them recognized Mr. Cameron, and all of them, when they learned that he had formerly resided at the capital, appeared glad to see him. The officer who had been in England led us to his residence, which was at some distance from the shore. It was a strongly built native house, standing in an extensive enclosure, most of which was under cultivation. We ascended by two

steps, and entered a large room, the walls of which were covered with rofia cloth, and the floor raised, boarded, and partially covered with matting. A table, on which a white cloth was spread and refreshments placed, stood in the centre; and around it were a number of chairs and native seats of matting, in the form of raised hassocks. We had not been here long before the chief judge, the next in authority to the governor, was announced. He was dressed in full official costume, and attended by a number of inferior officers. On entering the room, he frankly offered his hand, apologised for the governor, who he said was, on account of pressing business, unable to see us, but had sent him to bid us welcome. He then sat down, and after a few general remarks on the object of our visit and the state of the country, directed his attendants, and the inferior officers, to leave the room and wait outside. The judge and the chief officers then entered into a very free and grave conversation with us, which lasted several hours. The rumoured attack of the English naturally became one of the first subjects of inquiry, and, without pretending to any peculiar knowledge of the intentions of our own government, we felt no hesitation in assuring them that we did not believe there was the slightest founda. tion for such a report, adducing reasons for our opinion which appeared perfectly satisfactory; especially the friendly feelings towards the Malagasy people, so recently expressed by the governor of Mauritius to ourselves, when he knew that we were about to visit them. They brought forward a variety of other subjects, including also the attack made upon them in 1846, of which they gave us their version, and after alluding to the object of the merchants, in their present application to the Queen, asked, very gravely, what was the real purpose of our visit. This they were frankly told was no other than had been stated in our letter to the Queena visit, and only a visit, of friendship and goodwill, and to converse on subjects which we thought would tend to the good of the kingdom. Some of these we specified, and added, that we did not ourselves come with the intention of continuing, but as visitors, to remain in the country till the next suitable season for returning to the coast. They gave

to the gun-boats above Nanking, the cause of the outbreak, he said that a number of them were in the habit of meeting in Kouang-see for the worship of Jesu, and that the mandarins prohibited them, stating that they allowed no societies for the propagation of depraved doctrine; and, as they persisted in meeting, they had some of them beheaded. The remainder took up arms in their own defence, commencing with two hundred. They now state they have a million adherents. I have no doubt they have several hundred thousand at Nanking, Chin-keang-foo, Yangchow, and Kwa-chow.

"They had about twenty thousand daily employed while we were there, conveying rice into Nanking, and, assuming that they had one thousand full junks, many of which we know contained about four hundred tons each, they must have one hundred and fifty thousand tons, all which the imperialists have been deprived of, being government tribute.

"They are fanatical, but not to the extent at first supposed, and, I dare say, less so than we think, and with little difficulty, I think, might be made even less so.

"They believe they have a mission from Heaven to kill all the Mantchoos, and they certainly put this in execution as far as they can; and, without attempting to justify this practice, I believe that nothing short of driving the Tartars out of the country can make civilisation progressive in China.

46

They have no priests, nor ordained teachers holding that all believers are qualified for such purposes, yet they have people with ecclesiastical titles.

"Be they fanatical or not now, as they take the Bible for their rule of life and cir. culate it freely, it will produce its necessary fruits, and eradicate all such errors. That they value the Bible I can have no doubt. One of our men offered to buy one that was given to one of them, but he refused to sell it, neither would he let it out of his hand...

"If they succeed-and I fancy they will, and soon-they will deliver three hundred millions from the grossest of immoralities, the

most grovelling of idolatries, and the most grinding of tyrannies. China will be opened to light, life, and civilisation, all which will be thrown with all their influences and importance into the Anglo-Saxon scale.

"If they fail, Protestant Christianity— for whether spoken of by themselves or imperialists, they are always styled 'Worshippers of Jesu,' which is characteristic-will be proscribed, because they are identified by individuals among, if not by all, the imperialists, as connected with Protestant Christianity, but who are now too polite to proclaim it, lest it should originate a sympathy among us. A partial despotism will be re-established for a few years; meanwhile the Jesuits wil be active, working through their old ideas and form of idol worship, and may establish a Romanist dynasty-that is a court professing the Roman Catholic religion; and if the influence of these three hundred millions be thrown into the Popish scale, unless God Himself work a miracle for our deliverance, good night to liberty.

"Thousands of the insurgents visited the Hermes: and some few-very few—spoke a little broken English, and said they had been at school in Hong-kong. One said there were those among them who could translate the English Scriptures.

"One said, on going down among our men, that he was a Protestant: several said that they were of the same religion as them; others, again, said they were of the 'Ten Commandments' religion,' the same as the schools at Hong-kong; and one said he was of the same religion as King Victoria.'

"When I went into the city to see the chiefs, we were guided by a very nice boy of about sixteen, who, it appeared, had run away from his father. He spoke good Mandarine, and gave us tolerable information on some points. The earnestness with which he enjoined the avoidance of certain vices and the adherence to the Ten Commandments was amusing, stating that they knew they would not win the empire unless they kept them, and interlarding this with petitions for a double sword.