A Chinese Bull Run.
--We make the following extract, says the Bangor (Me.) Whig, from the letter of a young man in China, formerly residing here, to a relative in this city: Shanghai, Sunday, June 28.
I must tell you about a second edition of Bull Run that we had here last spring.
Shortly after I got back from Japan the commander of the Imperial army sent a force out to take a rebel city, about thirty miles from Shanghai, and I, like a fool, volunteered my services, expecting to see some fun and get some loot.
We had about eight hundred Chinese soldiers, but the officers were all English and American. --It took us nearly two days to march thirty miles over ditches and canals, and it was the morning of the third day when we prepared to make the attack.
We had four 32 pounders, which we planted within two hundred yards of the walls of the city.
We could not see a soul, and were beginning to calculate how much loot we should be likely to get, when one of the American officers sent a shell into the city to wake them up, and it did wake them up. Before the report died away five thousand rebels were on the walls.
The first volley they gave us killed forty Chinese soldiers, one Englishman and two Americans, and we did not wait for another.
The Chinese started first, and it was not long be fore we followed suit.
I stopped to spike one of the guns, in hopes of seeing my name mentioned in the commanding officer's dispatches, but I saw the rebels coming out of the gates and travelled.
Oh! how we ran!
It was the devil take the hindmost, and that wasn't me. Every few moments a bullet would come whizzing by our ears, which made us run the faster.
We threw everything away — guns, pistols, coats, and even our hats.
I lost my shoes before I had gone ten rods, but it had been raining all night, and the ground was nice and soft.
The rebels were hard after us. If one of their bullets had hit me it would have been in a place where my modesty would always have prevented me from showing the scar.
It was there that the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race over the long tailed inhabitants of this Celestial Empire was seen.
In fifteen minutes the Chinese soldiers were half a mile astern.
I got into Shanghai that night in about the same state that our father Adam was before his wife made him that first pair of pants.--Now, you needn't write and advise me to try it again, for I shan't do it. I shan't volunteer on any more Quixotic expeditions for the Emperor of China.
I have had enough.
But I don't count the time as lost.
I gained considerable information on my way in. I did not examine the country very minutely — I was too much in a hurry; but I found out how long it would take a short- legged man who had just got over the fever and ague to run thirty miles an swim not less than fifteen canals, with two or three hundred wild rebels after him. 