No developments have taken place during the past few hours.  So far very few men have been conspicuous; and as it is these few who have brought about the only developments, and outlined our position, and that they are to-day all terribly tired, we have absolute monotony.  I have not heard what the German Minister has been doing, but it is rumoured that he is engaged in trying to re-establish communication with Tientsin and the sea by bribing the Tsung-li Yamen smaller officials to take down packets of his despatches by pony-express.  It seems doubtful whether this will succeed.  For all communication has absolutely ceased now, and the Customs postal carriers say that it is impossible to get through by any stratagem, as all the roads are swarming with Boxers and banditti.  The Chinese Government, in its few despatches to some of the Legations, is clearly temporising and trying to save itself.  There is no means of knowing what is going on inside the Palace, or of understanding what the Empress Dowager has decided.  Everybody says it is all topsy-turvydom now in the capital, and that the most extraordinary reports are coming in from the provinces.  Our Chinese despatch writers, our Manchu servants, and the few natives who come through our barricaded streets, all say the same thing—­that it is too soon to speak, but that the dangers are enormous.  Meanwhile the more timid of these people attached to the Legation area are sending word that they are sick and cannot come any more.  It is a polite way of saying that they are afraid.  I do not blame them, since anything now is possible.  You cannot surely ask men to sacrifice themselves when they are only bound to you by the hire system.  Such is the external and general situation.

Within our own quarter things are much the same, developing naturally along the line of least resistance.

Now that Prince Su’s palace grounds have been openly converted into a Roman Catholic sanctuary, hundreds of converts are pouring in on us from everywhere, laden with their pots and pans, their beds, and their bundles of rice; indeed, carrying every imaginable thing.  The great Northern Cathedral and Monseigneur F——­ are in no danger, for the time being at least, since the cathedral and its extensive grounds are surrounded by powerful walls and the bishop has now got his fifty guards and possibly a couple of thousand young native Catholics, who can probably be armed and fight.  So although it seems as if the whole Roman Catholic population of Peking is pouring in on us, we are in reality only getting a few hundred miserables who had no time to fly to their chief priest when the storm caught them; we have to prepare for the worst, as everything is developing very slowly.