The Scenes That Followed Are Stated To Have Surpassed Description.

It was computed that 30,000 men alone perished after the fall of the old Panthay capital, and the Futai sent to Yunnanfoo twenty-four large baskets full of human ears, as well as the heads of the seventeen chiefs.

With the capture of Talifoo the great Mohammedan rebellion in the southwest, to which the Burmese gave the name of Panthay, closed, after a desultory struggle of nearly eighteen years. The war was conducted with exceptional ferocity on both sides, and witnessed more than the usual amount of falseness and breach of faith common to Oriental struggles. Nobody benefited by the contest, and the prosperity of Yunnan, which at one time had been far from inconsiderable, sank to the lowest possible point. A new class of officials came to the front during this period of disorder, and fidelity was a sufficient passport to a certain rank. Ma Julung, the Marshal Ma of European travelers, gained a still higher station; and notwithstanding the jealousy of his colleagues, acquired practical supremacy in the province. The high priest, Ma Tesing, who may be considered as the prime instigator of the movement, was executed or poisoned in 1874 at the instigation of some of the Chinese officials. Yang Yuko, the most successful of all the generals, only enjoyed a brief tenure of power. It was said that he was dissatisfied with his position as commander-in-chief, and aspired to a higher rank. He also was summoned to Pekin, but never got further than Shanghai, where he died, or was removed. But although quiet gradually descended upon this part of China, it was long before prosperity followed in its train.

About six years after the first mutterings of discontent among the Mohammedans in the southwest, disturbances occurred in the northwest provinces of Shensi and Kansuh, where there had been many thousand followers of Islam since an early period of Chinese history. They were generally obedient subjects and sedulous cultivators of the soil; but they were always liable to sudden ebullitions of fanaticism or of turbulence, and it was said that during the later years of his reign Keen Lung had meditated a wholesale execution of the male population above the age of fifteen. The threat, if ever made, was never carried out, but the report suffices to show the extent to which danger was apprehended from the Tungan population. The true origin of the great outbreak in 1862 in Shensi seems to have been a quarrel between the Chinese and the Mohammedan militia as to their share of the spoil derived from the defeat and overthrow of a brigand leader. After some bloodshed, two imperial commissioners were sent from Pekin to restore order. The principal Mohammedan leader formed a plot to murder the commissioners, and on their arrival he rushed into their presence and slew one of them with his own hand. His co-religionists deplored the rash act, and voluntarily seized and surrendered him for the purpose of undergoing a cruel death.

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