TALI-FOU 



same period over two thousand Christians were killed on the 

 banks of the Blue River, for which no redress has ever been 

 obtained. 



The 28th of March 1884 saw the murder of Father Terrace 

 at Chia-fung-tse. An accusation had been trumped up against 

 him, which the taotai of Tali, Fong by name, refused to enter- 

 tain. But a Fou-kien mandarin of the third order encouraged 

 it, and gave the people carte-blanche to wreak their will. The 

 Father was accordingly besieged in his house, and, after an 

 heroic defence through an entire night, aided only by two aged 

 women, he was stoned to death. His body was subjected to 

 horrible mutilations, the heart and liver being boiled in a 

 cauldron ; and it was with feelings of extreme repulsion and 

 self-repression that, some months after the occurrence. Father 

 Leguilcher found himself constrained by his position to enter- 

 tain the perpetrator of this diabolical human cookery. The 

 Chinese Government subsequently paid fifty thousand taels to 

 the mission, as compensation for the outrage. 



The Father told us that it was no specific witchcraft that 

 was attributed to the Christians, but such idle superstitions as 

 the supposed evil augury of cutting a fowl's tail-feathers, that 

 sufficed to inflame the fanaticism of the Chinese against them. 

 In the days of their worst terror the Christians adopted a 

 private argot among themselves, which their oppressors called 

 "devil talk"; but it only survives now among a few of the 

 former generation. 



As a rule, the persecution is the work of members of secret 

 societies fostered by the mandarins, " The United Brotherhood " 

 as they are termed. They burn incense, a cock is killed, and 

 his blood, mixed with spirit, is drunk by every confederate. 



