Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/306

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236
ACROSS THE HEART OF CHINA.

warfare were not enough, plague and pestilence lit upon the scene, and added remorselessly to the havoc already wrought by the hand of man.

The story of the Mohammedan rising is briefly this. The mandarins in charge of the work at the mines, absorbed after the manner of their kind in the fascinating pastime of lining their own pockets, took no thought for the men slaving under them, but rather assumed the attitude of Pharaoh towards the Israelites when he said unto them, "Ye are idle, ye are idle; go ye, get you straw where ye can find it; yet not ought of your work shall be diminished." The Chinese are the most easily governed people in the world, yet there comes a time when even a Chinaman rebels, and, goaded beyond endurance under the rod of the taskmaster, they rose. The miners were chiefly Mohammedans, or Hui-hui as they were termed in the country itself, and they were soon joined by their coreligionists throughout the province, already exasperated by the partiality of the magistrates, who had been displaying their zeal for