Show irom the ller jane li FROM cum laboring in the sihar mines through the ol 01 sir aobert C wilson we are able to ghe the following extracts of a leter from mr widd written for sir from yen ting shan iirene of mongolia china anjer date of april this is the first news we have rp ned e leit tour months and ten days ago john is foreman at ku shan azin mine twenty bilea from here by r ml did you eier read IIa feils brotia ol 01 the world of chance if so you have a good idea 0 the people who inhabit the opposite side of the globe from where iou are to begin with alk sal people are not chinese proper they belong to the tartar or Kons bura race or did originally we are north 0 the great wall which at one time divided the chinese and tartara Tar lara after the tartars broke through the wall and in vaceil and partly conquered china the people mixed up together so in this country only about one halt of the people v ear the queue or pigtail u huh in held so sacred by the chireau Chire aa the people in this couii try talk is know 11 as the and they cannot understand or speak chinese auy more than you can they are larger than the chinese of southern china and as much diu orent as the chinese are from ane alaska in iliana they a re a very mild tem people and generally very easy to get aiona with they are very poor the on a farm beine only dubont tl per month in eummer the majority go naked lint in winter they near goat and t liepp skin get ten cents ler day and baird I 1 have about under me and the eliat any one of them receives is pet I 1 have three shift bosses n lio get 4 W per month they do very well aa miners just 9 eoon aa you get them to understand the business and they are very willing to learn to mine like the americans now 0 o illustrate what we have to contend with I 1 will tell you of their habits in mourning for the dead they wear everything white in marrying they aro never allowed to see their wives before marriage their wives are looked down upon as only loor servants men neier allow their wives or daughters to eat with them girl babes are often destroyed at birch buy babes are looked on as a good omen and are raided and petted in teaming you will see cows oxen horses males and donkeys all hitched to the fiame cart the only vehicle they possess L iichi animal has harness and the ings or traces are made of roe and reath from the animal to the abla of the cart going through an eight at the end of the shaft these tugs are often thirty to forty feel long and as many an pine animals of all claesges work on one cart from one to five breast abreast a it makes a strange looking team camels are used for pack the carpenter turns hie grindstone the opposite way to what wo do the saw is drawn toward you the teeth pointing towards you the plane is also drawn toward you and everything atiat is possible fry to do contrary to w aliey do so imagine yourself sn a country amongst a people doing everything reversed and you have a fair idea of this country lumber and are all whipsawed from the og by hand such a tool as a chopping ax is not known trees are awed down they have a rude kind of ft foot adze saw hatchet chalk ice plane end chidel this cinski lutea a beet of carpentere carp entera tools A round hole is made with a drill bit fining was all formerly done a lammer or maul or sharp pointed aiace of steel without the use of puw ler I 1 like lie people here better than n any part of china that I 1 have been n we traveled some sixteen hundred miles overland in china we traversed the abalo length of the areat plains bordering along the yellow bea we crossed the Shan ling mountain range and in our travels saw plenty of redheaded red headed women and children and men red leads and bearda at that we saw plenty of women with feet not more than three inches in length this looks to be impossible nevertheless it is true when they are babes their feet are bound up BO they never grow any larger makes them crippled for life they homeier hoa eier think it is nico to leave small leet we are north of the city of berho in the mountain ranee not far from the line of siberia |