imagining that they are plotting, &c., there is not a single European who can speak their language.  No doubt this is a great source of misunderstanding.  The last row, which did not end in a massacre, but which might have done so, originated in the receipt of certain police regulations from Calcutta.  These regulations were ill translated, and published after Christmas Day.  The Chinese, believing that they authorised the police to enter their houses at all periods, to interfere with their amusements at the New Year, &c., shut up their shops, which is their constitutional mode of expressing dissatisfaction.  It was immediately inferred in certain quarters that the Chinese intended, out of sympathy with the Cantonese, to murder all the Europeans.  Luckily the Governor thought it advisable to explain to them what the obnoxious ordinances really meant before proceeding to exterminate them, and a few hours of explanation had the effect of inducing them to re-open their shops, and go on quietly with their usual avocations.  Just the same thing happened at Penang.  There too, because the Chinamen showed some disinclination to obey regulations of police which interfered with their amusements and habits, a plot against the Europeans was immediately suspected, and great indignation expressed because it was not put down with vigour!

[Sidenote:  The Sultan of Johore.] [Sidenote:  Freres Chretiens.] [Sidenote:  Soeurs.]

June 13th.—­I have just been interrupted to go and see the Sultan of Johore.  These princes in this country, and indeed all over the East, are spoilt from their childhood, all their passions indulged and fostered by their parents, who say, ’What is the use of being a prince, if he may not have more ghee, etc. etc. than his neighbours?’ I do not see what can be done for them.  At the school I visited this morning are two sultan’s sons (of Queddah), but they were at home for some holidays, when they will probably be ruined.  During my morning’s walk I heard something like the sound of a school in a house adjoining, and I proposed to enter and inspect.  I found an establishment of Freres chretiens, and one of them (an Irishman) claimed acquaintance, as having been with Bishop Phelan when he visited me in Canada.  We struck up a friendship accordingly, and I told him that if there were any Soeurs I should like to see them.  He introduced me to the Vicar Apostolic, a Frenchman, and we went to the establishment of the Soeurs.  I found the Superieure a very superior person, evidently with her heart in the work, and ready for any fate to which it might expose her, but quiet and cheerful.  I told her that a devout lady in Paris had expressed a fear that my mission to China would put an end to martyrdom in that country.  She smiled, and said that she thought there would always be on this earth martyrdom in abundance.  The Sisters educate a number of orphan girls as well as others.