Directory_and_Chronicle_1912

CANTON

1027

66 miles was open to traffic and work had been s ́arted as far as the 160th mile. The total length of the line in the Kwangtung Province will be 209 miles Owing to the difficulties experienced in getting the Chinese shareholders to pay up the calls on their shares as they fell due, the Government resolved at the end of 1998 to raise a foreign loan. A Chinese-owned line from Canton to Whampoa and thence to Amoy has been projected and surveys have been made. The capital of the company is 40 million dollars, but only about one-fifth has been paid up or promised. A concession for a line from Macao to Canton was granted in November, 1904, to a Sino-Portuguese syndicate after prolonged negotiations. This concession has since been cancelled, but more is likely to be heard of the project when once the Macao boundary question is settled. In accordance with stipulations in the Supplementary Commercial Treaty between Great Britain and China, concluded in 1902, the various barriers or artificial obstructions to navigation in the Canton River were in 1905 partially removed, thus rendering the approaches to Canton safer and easive for shipping, and simplifying work in connection with the pro- posal to improve the accommodation for shipping in the harbour. Extensive wharves

and godowns have been erected at Pak Hin Hok on Honam Island, about two miles below Shameen, which enable ocean-going vessels of considerable draught to proceed up to Canton. During the last year or two large bunding operations have been in progress, along the Front and Back Reaches, and a considerable amount of building has been done on the Shameen, where there are now very few vacant lots. Owing to the disturbed state of China, a British Force of about 300 troops from Hongkong was quartered on the Shameen at the end of 1911, and with big guns, maxims, barbed wire entanglements, sand bag fortifications, &e., the Shameen had the appearance of an island under siege. Canton remained remarkably quiet when the general rising occurred. In April the Tartar-General had been shot; in May a revolutionary crowd made an assault on the Viceroy's yamen, but stern military measures prevented a general rising. Later in the year the new Tartar-General was assassinated by a bomb as he landed in Canton, and on another occasion an attempt, which proved nearly successful, was made to assassinate Admiral Li, who so effectually checked the rising in May. When the revolution broke out on a grand scale in October, the Viceroy, recognising the hopelessness of resistance with troops honeycombed with sedition, and with a popula- tion unanimously in sympathy with revolution, readily agreed to the transfer of the Government to the revolutionary leaders, and the independence of the province was thus attained without bloodshed.

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