monotony. I
have not heard what the German Minister has been doing, but it is
rumoured that he is engaged in trying to re-establish communication
with Tientsin and the sea by bribing the Tsung-li Yamen smaller
officials to take down packets of his despatches by pony-express. It
seems doubtful whether this will succeed. For all communication has
absolutely ceased now, and the Customs postal carriers say that it is
impossible to get through by any stratagem, as all the roads are
swarming with Boxers and banditti. The Chinese Government, in its few
despatches to some of the Legations, is clearly temporising and trying
to save itself. There is no means of knowing what is going on inside
the Palace, or of understanding what the Empress Dowager has decided.
Everybody says it is all topsy-turvydom now in the capital, and that
the most extraordinary reports are coming in from the provinces. Our
Chinese despatch writers, our Manchu servants, and the few natives who
come through our barricaded streets, all say the same thing--that it
is too soon to speak, but that the dangers are enormous. Meanwhile the
more timid of these people attached to the Legation area are sending
word that they are sick and cannot come any more. It is a polite way
of saying that they are afraid. I do not blame them, since anything
now is possible. You cannot surely ask men to sacrifice themselves
when they are only bound to you by the hire system. Such is the
external and general situation.

Within our own quarter things are much the same, developing naturally
along the line of least resistance.

Now that Prince Su's palace grounds have been openly converted into a
Roman Catholic sanctuary, hundreds of converts are pouring in on us
from everywhere, laden with their pots and pans, their beds, and their
bundles of rice; indeed, carrying every imaginable thing. The great
Northern Cathedral and Monseigneur F---- are in no danger, for the
time being at least, since the cathedral and its extensive grounds are
surrounded by powerful walls and the bishop has now got his fifty
guards and possibly a couple of thousand young native Catholics, who
can probably be armed and fight. So although it seems as if the whole
Roman Catholic population of Peking is pouring in on us, we are in
reality only getting a few hundred miserables who had no time to fly
to their chief priest when the storm caught them; we have to prepare
for the worst, as everything is developing very