98
Against this may be set the fact that the deposits are not secured by the Government, but this would seem to have been no obstacle to the success of a Savings Bank at Shanghai, and need not be here. The Hongkong Savings Bank was opened on May 1st, and already more than $50,000 has been deposited.
*
6. An attempt was made, in connection with this Savings Bank, to introduce the system, so popular at home, of encouraging children and others to save small sums by means of Postage Stamps. In the United Kingdom every child who can from time to time purchase twelve penny stamps, and who affixes them to a form supplied free at any Post Office, is entitled to be credited with a shilling in the Post Office Savings Bank, which receives more than £200 a week in these little sums alone. It can hardly be said that it was hoped to introduce more thrifty habits amongst a certain class of our younger fellow citizens, but it was felt that at least the attempt should be made. Whether, however, pocket money is not a Hongkong institution, or whether other attractions are too strong, certain it is that the ten-cent system of saving does not seem to take hold of the young here as the penny system does in England. Only $65 has been thus collected since the Bank was opened.
7. It was hoped that another year would not come to an end without the establishment of an effective Parcels Post between China and the United Kingdom. The subject has not been lost sight of and is under consideration. It is to be feared however that one of the points always advocated by this Office-freedom from Customs interference-will not be secured.
8. On the 1st March the Post Office of Macao assumed its proper position as a Portuguese Post Office under the Postal Union, the previous irregular arrangement by which it was worked as a kind of honorary Agency of this Office (but an Agency under no control) being discontinued. The necessity for this change had been more than once urged on the Post Office of Macao, but until the arrival of the present Governor of that Settlement nothing was done in the matter.
9. Corea is also moving in the direction of admission into the Postal Union, and it is quite possible that that ignis fatuus which has long flitted before the eager eyes of philatelists--a Corean Postage stamp may ere long become a tangible reality. For years past this Office has been accustomed to receive almost touching appeals for Corean Stamps, when there was about as much possibility of obtaining them as there is of getting the postage stamps (if any) of the moon. Similar applications are sometimes received begging for the stamps of Kashgar, of Thibet, &c. .
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10. A considerable increase in the sale of stamps is due to the action of the San Francisco Customs in seizing all the letters which Chinese passengers attempt to smuggle in their baggage or about their persons. The return of 25,000 of these smuggled letters from San Francisco by one steamer created something like a panic in the Chinese Community.
11. Through the co-operation of the Police department arrangements have been completed for signal- ling the arrival of the English mail from the new Kowloon Police Station at night, and when the wea- ther is cloudy and the Peak signal station obscured. These arrangements have already been most successful, and effectually prevent the serious inconveniences connected with the arrival of an unsignal-
led mail.
12. Enquiries were set on foot as to whether it would not be possible to have the French mail sorted at Singapore during the stay of the steamer there, but the practical difficulties were, as before, found to be too many for any hope of success.
13. On September 9th the P. & O. packet Brindisi arrived here with both the English and French mails on board, owing to the Djemnah's having been quarantined in Egypt. The mail officer on board had sorted all the letters by both mails, which were ready for delivery five minutes after the bags reached the Post Office. The papers took an hour and a quarter to sort, the operations being much retarded by the filthy tarred bags in which the continental mails were enclosed as a kind of fetish against cholera. Quarantine as applied to mails is generally imagined by scientific authorities to be useless, but it is not so. It induces a salutary exercise of patience on the part of Postal Officers.
14. The English mail once arrived unsorted, from a cause which could not have been foreseen. The sorting was completed on shore in less than an hour and a half, in spite of hindrances from tarred bags.
15. The warlike operations between France and China have of course had their effect on the work of this Department as on everything else. The Messageries line between Hongkong and Shanghai has been temporarily discontinued, and the mails are conveyed by private steamers. There has been some difficulty in getting mails to Foochow, and it was latterly found impossible to get correspondence for the French fleet delivered there at all. On October 3rd, when the Saghalien arrived with the French mail, some excitement prevailed amongst the labouring classes of Chinese here, and it was not easy to get the mails on shore, nor to get them brought up to the Post Office. During the last two months the Island of Formosa has been blockaded, and the opportunities of exchanging correspondence have of course been very fitful.
*The above figures have been kindly supplied by the Chief Manager of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank.