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SHANGHAI
Rijke, with the assistance of the Coast Inspector's department of the Maritime Customs, made a close study of the river and bar and his report was in printed and circulated. As a result it was proposed that a Conservancy Board should be established, but nothing- definite has yet been done. The cost of putting Mr. de Rijke's schemes into operation. would be considerable.
The approach by sea to Shanghai is now well lighted and buoyed, and the dangers. of the ever shifting banks and shoals as well guarded as can be expected. Under the supreintendence of the Engineering department of the Maritime Customs, Lighthouses. have been erected on West Volcano, Shaweishan, North Saddle, Gutzlaff, Bonham and Steep Islands, Peiyüshan, and at Woosung. There are also two lightships in the Yangtsze below Woosung.
HISTORY
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Shanghai-the name means "upper sea or "near the sea"-is mentioned as: existing in 249 B.C. It was a place of some importance in the eleventh century, when it was made a customs station; it became a hsien or third rate city in the fourteenth century. The walls, which are three and a half miles in circuit, with seven gates, were erected at the time of the Japanese invasion, in the latter part of the sixteenth century. It had been an important seat of trade for many centuries before the incursion of foreigners, and even two thousand years ago was celebrated as the seat. of an extensive cotton manufacturing industry. Shanghai was visited in 1832 by Mr. H. H. Lindsay, head of the late firm of Lindsay & Co., and the Rev. Chas. Gutzlaff, in the Lord Amherst, with a view of opening up trade. Mr. Lindsay says he counted upwards of four hundred junks passing inwards every day for seven days,, and found the place possessed commodious wharves and large warehouses. Three years later it was visited by the Rev. Dr. Medhurst, who confirmed the account given by Mr. Lindsay. On the 13th June, 1842, a British fleet under Vice-Admiral Sir· William Parker, and a military force of 4,000 men under Sir Hugh Gough, captured the Woosung forts, which mounted 175 guns, and took the hsien (district) city of Paoshan. On the 19th, after a slight resistance, the force gained possession of Shanghai, the officials and a large proportion of the inhabitants. having fled the previous evening, although great preparations had been made for the defence, 406 pieces of cannon being taken possession of by the British. The people, however rapidly returned and business was resumed. The same force afterwards captured Chinkiang and Hankow, after which the treaty of Nanking was signed, and the ports of Swatow, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai were opened to trade. The city was evacuated on the 23rd June.
The ground selected by Captain Balfour, the first British Consul, for a 'Settle- ment for his nationals, lies about half a mile north of the city walls, between the Yang-king-pang and Soochow Creeks, and extends backward from the river to a ditch connecting the two, called the Defence Creek, thus forming what may be called an island, a mile square. The port was formally declared open to trade on the 17th November, 1843. Some years were occupied in draining and laying out the: ground, which was mostly a marsh with numerous ponds and creeks. The foreignere in the meantime lived at Namtao, a suburb between the city and the river, the British Consulate being in the city. In two years a few houses were built in the Settlement, and by 1849 most foreigners had taken up their residence in it. By that time twenty-five firms were established, and the foreign residents numbered a hundred, including seven ladies. In that year an English Church was built, and. on 21st November the foundation of the Roman Catholic Cathedral at Tungkadoo. was laid. The French were in 1849 granted the ground between the city walls. and the British Settlement on the same terms, and, in exchange for help rendred in driving out the rebels who had seized the city in 1853, got a grant of the land extending for about a mile to the south between the city walls and the river. They have since by purchase extended the bounds of the Concession westward to the "Ningpo Joss house," a mile from the river. Negociations were instituted for an extension of the Concession to Sicawei, a village chiefly occupied by the Jesuits and their converts, situated at the end of the French Municipal road and five- miles from the French Bund, but in this the French were only partially successful, a small extension as far as the Old Cemetery being granted them in 1899. The exact dimensions have not yet been deliminated. Later on the Americans rented land immediately north of Soochow Creek, in the district called Hongkew,. so that the ground now occupied by foreigners extends for about five miles. on the left bank of the river. The land in the British Settlement was assessed: in 1896 at Tls. 18,532,573,. and that in Hongkew at Tls. 10,379,735; in 1890 at