Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/327

304 military operations were destined soon to be antiquated and replaced by steam vessels, and that the Chinese navy as a whole, particularly the portion on the sea, should be modernised. When the steamer was completed it was brought up to Nanking for inspection, and Tsêng gave it the name T'ienchi. Though it measured but 185 feet in length (probably Chinese measurement), its completion was a milestone in China's progress. The ironworks where it was built then covered about twelve acres of ground and included departments for building engines, constructing machinery, smelting ore, making rifles, doing woodwork, casting brass and iron, and making rockets and other projectiles. There were many store-houses and offices. A dock for the repair of vessels was still lacking, and Tsêng realised also the pressing need for technical books translated from foreign languages.

In the same year, 1868, occurred the Yangchow riot. On the twenty-second of August, after ample warnings of trouble and appeals to the prefect by the Rev. J. Hudson Taylor, a mob attacked the China Inland Mission buildings, recently rented and occupied by a number of missionaries, both men and women. They were accused of the usual crimes, kidnapping and putting to death children in order to use certain parts of their bodies for medicine. Since the authorities, despite many appeals, had failed to give protection, at least to property, it was generally believed among the foreign population of China