armed soldiers."

Seven years before, an expedition under Major Sladen had advanced from
Burma into Western China as far as Tengyueh; had remained in Tengyueh
from May 25th to July 13th, 1868; had entered into friendly negotiations
with the military governor and other Mohammedan officials in revolt
against China; and had remained under the friendly protection of the
Mohammedan insurgents who were then in possession of Western China from
Tengyueh to near Yunnan City. "To what principles," it has been asked,
"of justice or equity can we attribute the action of the British in
retaining their Minister at the capital of an empire while sending a
peaceful mission to a rebel in arms at its boundaries?"

The Mohammedan insurrection was not quelled till the early months of
1874. And less than a year later the Chinese learned with alarm that
another peaceful expedition was entering Western China, by the same
route, under the same auspices, and with the identical objects of the
expedition which had been welcomed by the leaders of the insurrection.

The Chinese mind was incapable of grasping the fact that the second
expedition was planned solely to discover new fields for international
commerce and scientific investigation. Barbarians as they are, they
feared that England thereby intended to "foster the dying embers of the
rebellion." No time for such an expedition, a peaceful trade expedition,
could have been more ill-chosen. The folly of it was seen in the murder
of Margary and the repulse of Colonel Horace Browne, whose expedition
was driven back at Tsurai within sight of Manyuen. And this murder,
known to all the world, is the typical instance cited in illustration of
the barbarity of the Chinese.

China may be a barbarous country; many missionaries have said so, and it
is the fashion so to speak; but let us for a moment look at facts.
During the last twenty-three years foreigners of every nationality and
every degree of temperament, from the mildest to the most fanatical,
have penetrated into every nook and cranny of the empire. Some have been
sent back, and there has been an occasional riot with some destruction
of property. But all the foreigners who have been killed can be numbered
on the fingers of one hand, and in the majority of these cases it can
hardly be denied that it was the indiscretion of the white man which was
the exciting cause of his murder. In the same time how many hundreds of
unoffending Chinese have be