1 208 
THROUGH ASIA 
the besiegers would gain entrance into the city, fling open 
the gates, and so let in their co-religionists like a horde 
of ravening wolves, to ruin and destroy everything, and 
massacre every living being. Amid the unbridled licence 
of such a time the missionaries would of course have 
been slain along with the rest of the inhabitants, for they 
always wore Chinese costumes. The entire five months 
were a period of painful tension throughout. Again and 
again when they heard the Chinese running, shouting and 
screaming, through the streets, they thought that the 
dreaded moment was come at last. Mr. Ridley would 
then hasten to the walls, where the sentries were marching 
up and down with their lanterns and whips, to weaken up 
those who slumbered on their posts. In the daytime they 
often saw large bands of the Dungans scouring the country 
around, and the slopes of the circumjacent mountains 
swarmed with them to such an extent as to seem dotted 
all over with black spots. 
Every Chinese temple outside the wall was reduced to 
ashes. I visited the ruins of one of these, which had 
been built only a few years before at the expense of 
the merchants of the neighbouring province of Shen-si. 
What a scene of desolation ! Heaps of ashes and rub- 
bish, with the mutilated remains of the temple-idols 
sticking up through them, humiliating memorials of human 
superstition ! 
And what awful sights met one in the streets during 
the period of the siege ! Hunger, filth, putrefying corpses, 
all the concomitants of over-population, gave rise to horrid 
diseases, every species of privation and suffering. Little 
children were flung out into the street before they were 
really dead, to be worried by dogs and devoured by swine. 
The missionaries however suffered no want, because the 
Jen Tai kept them supplied with provisions in return 
for the great services they rendered his soldiers by 
amputating their limbs, extracting bullets, and nursing 
the sick and wounded. I myself saw certain ghastly 
evidences of the revolt. On the gates of the town there 
were a number of small wooden cages, each with a label 
