632 THE JAPANESE PROTECTED CRUISER "VOSHINO."

CHAPTER XVII.

THE TREATY OF SHIMONOSEKI AND THE INTERVENTION OF THE WESTERN POWERS.

AFTER the fall of Port Arthur the Chinese Government had sent envoys to Hiroshima to negotiate for peace, but the Japanese Government had refused to receive them on discovering that they wereofficials of minorrank who were not provided with proper credentials or full powers to treat. A second embassy reachedHiroshima on January 31st,in the firstdays of theWei-hai-weicampaign. Two mandarinsofrank werethechiefenvoys,andwith them camemore than a score of attaches, secretaries, andinterpreters. Two American gentlemen belonging to theUnited States diplomatic service accompanied them as unofficial advisers. On Februaryist credentials were exchangedwith the Japanese Foreign Office, and it was found that again the Chinese envoys had not been provided with full powers, and would have to refer at every step to Pekin. The Japanese Government therefore on the next day handed the envoys amemorandum in which they refused to open any negotiations unless with properly accredited plenipotentiaries, empowered by the PekinGovernment to conclude the preliminaries of peace. So the second embassy returned to China without havingobtained any result.

turned to the most influential man in China, the only one of the mandarins whose name carried any weight in international affairs, the aged statesman Li HungChang. In the earlier stages of the war he had been blamed for the general breakdown of the Chinese armies, and he had been officially deprived of his highest honours and decorations, the yellow jacket and the peacock's feathers. He was now asked to proceed to Japan as the head of a third peace embassy.

He was accompanied by his adopted son, generally spoken of inEngland as Lord Li,who had been at one time attached to the embassy in London. The American diplomatist, General Foster, also went with him, and the suite of the embassy numbered over a hundred Chinese officials. The Japanese Government selected Shimonoseki as the place of the negotiations, andLiHungChanglanded there onMarch 20th.

This time tlae credentials of the envoy were in perfect order, and the negotiations at once began. They weremaking satisfactoryprogress, when, on March 24th, as LiHung Chang was returning tohis residence after a conference, he was fired upon by a young fanatic named Koyanaa, and wounded in the face. The old man showed wonderful coolness and courage, bore without flinching the extraction of the bullet,andmade a rapid recovery. The outrage called forth a remarkablemanifestation of feeling in Japan. Everywhere there was the keenest anxiety to show that the nation had no part in.

The fall of Wei-hai-wei, the steady progress f the Japanese arms in Manchuria, aud the certainty that as soon as the ice broke upin the Gulf ofPe-.chi-li,Pekin itself wouldbe menaced by the victorious enemy— all this forced the Chinese at last to take earnest measures to secure peace. Inits extremity the Government