The San Francisco call., 1898-12-31
OVER A THOUSAND DROWNED
PEOPLE IN RooKERIES AND BOATS PERISH MISERABLY.
Oriental News Also Includes the Loss of an Ocean Steamer and the Murder of Several
 Missionaries.
Special Dispatch to The Call.

VICTORIA, B. C., Dec. 30.-The steamers Victoria and Yamaguchi Maru arrived to-day with news from the Orient to December 15. Another serious calamity, writes the Hankow core spondent of the North China Daily News, files of which were received by the steamers, has befallen the unfor- tunate town of HankoW. About a month previous a terrible confiagration destroyed a goodly portion of the town and caused the loss of upward of 2OOO lives, and now about a thousand if not many more of the unfortunate inhabi- tants of Hankow have met death, not by fire, but water being the agent this time.
 About noon on December half a street of houses extending from the great Matou to the middle Matou, a distance of about a Ii along the edge of the river Han suddenly broke away and tumbled into the water on the top of all the boats there. At this par ticular point the bank at present is forty feet high and almost perpendicu- lar. The houses built on it, according to the custom, extended a good deal beyond the edge of the bank by the aid of poles supporting them from under meath. The river at this spot is very deep and runs with a strong current. There have been some freshets recent ly which must have cut away the bank below the level of the water, under mining the banks on which the street was built, for the whole gave way without the least warning and houses and boats with all their people in them disappeared in a moment with a great crash.
 As usual it Is impossible to learn with any accuracy the number of lives lost, but the general statement Is that about a hundred houses and the same num- Der of boats are gone and from thous- and to one thousand five hundred peo- pie drowned. There is not much to be seen at the place, nothing but a bare bank, as clean cut away as if 1t had been done with a huge razor and the water covered with people busy fishing up bodies or anything else they can hook hold of
 The Japan Gazette says: Since the attack on the Russian troops at Andi- jan some time back discontent and dis satisfaction have been rife throughout the province. This feeling has assumed such proportions that the Russian au- thorities have already strengthened their garrisons by quintupling them. They have moreover occupied a larger village in force and superseded the civil by a military administration. The causes of this state of things are not far to seek and in fact may be traced to the barbarous rigor with which the late rising has been suppressed. Not more than POO or 300 fanatics were en- gagged in the attack on the Russians, yet, in one town it is asserted every male adult resident was at one time or another arrested, although it was known that very few of the culprits
 
 arrested on suspicion and fogged in order to eXtort information. Not only were the actual indicators punished, but their relatives of all degrees were also imprisoned. The special commits sioner sent to investigate appears to have imprisoned all from whom it was thought evidence could be extracted In addition to this a fine of 100000 rubles has been inflicted on the dis trict. the payment of which will fall upon the respectable middle-class, who had nothing to do with the attack.
 The American, a Manila paper, says: The revenue cutter McCulloch after circling DeWey's fleet while bands played and tars cheered, has started for home to join the Boring Sea patrol feet. The McCulloch left New York in 1897 to join the revenue cutter fleet in Boring Sea, going by way of the Suez canal and visiting all places of interest on the Mediterranean. Upon her ar rival at Singapore she found orders awaiting her to join the Asiatic fleet with all possible haste, learning for the first time of the difficulties between Spain and the United States. She made the quickest run from Singapore to Hongkong of any steamer on this coast, joining Admiral Deweys fleet, where she took a prominent part in the battle as a dispatch boat. She will be several months in reaching the Boring Sea, as she is to visit all the principal places on the coast of China and Japan, going across the northern ocean by the AleCtian Islands.
 The steamer Shoko Maru on her way from Tamsui, Formosa, to another port was swamped and sunk by huge wave near Daianko on December 14. Only one man was saved out of forty passengers and crew.
 News comes of more murders of mis- sionaries. The Japan Herald says: An English miss onary has been murdered by natives and soldiers at Tsingping. ninety miles east of Kueiyang. A French missionary has been burned to death at Swatow. and a German mis- siOnary has also been mortally injured