PUZZLE.

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 84, 15 July 1895, Page 3

PUZZLE.

The Court of Pekin was once greatly puzzled by a despatch addressed to it in Chinese by the American Legation. Mr Haloombe, for many years interpreter, secretary, &c., to the American Minister at Pekin, tells the story in The Real Chinaman : -“By direction of the Secretary of State, the author once addressed a despatch to the Chinese Foreign Office, which is composed of the entire Cabinet, requesting that certain facilities be extended to several naval officers who were instructed to take observations in order to ietermine a magnetic secondary meridian of longitude. No reply was received for a week, and then came a note saying that the Prince Eegent and the Cabinet would call the next afternoon to inquire after the author’s health. They arrived at the appointed hour, and having shown anxious solicitude for the physical welfare of their host, who had not been ill a day during the 10 or more years of their acquaintance with him, the real object of their visit came to light. They introduced it by the most profuse and extravagant compliments for the elegant diction and high literary style of the despatch. It was chaste, clean eat, and exact. No native scholars in modern days could write better Chinese; but—and here they hesitated and commented upon their own stupidity and ignorance— they bad not the remotest idea what it meant. They could gather that the despatch made a request, but beyond that point they groped in utter darkness. An hour of explanation, while it manifestly failed to give them any clear idea of the nature of a secondary meridian of longitude, showed thorn that the request involved nothing dangerous or that would be unwise to grant. They naively admitted that the Cabinet bad been for a week divided regarding the contents of the despatch ; one faction, headed by the Secretary of the Treasury, insisting that it referred to a quarantine, since it contained one character used in connection with cholera, while the others followed the lead of the Prince Eegent, who held that it had something to say about a dynamite gun. The day following this visit a most corteous reply was received grantiag the request.”