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see by the joint letter of Messrs. Jardine Matheson and Company and other merchants in Canton contracts made with Silk manufacturers in Europe have been broken, to their serious loss by the non-delivery of the silk for which they had contracted with Chinese merchants, unable through the insecurity of the river to forward the produce.
2. It is evident that this great injury to trade can only be remedied by affording protection to the Chinese producer and whatever steps the Chinese Government may be able to take on land to suppress the bands of robbers, on the river it would appear to be powerless.
3. To afford adequate protection on the river and its affluents it would be necessary to secure constant supervision by considerable increase in the number of boats of light draught of the "Sandpiper" class with smaller armed boats to enable piratical boats to be pursued into the shallow creeks to which they retire.
4. Although one or two foreign craft have been attacked in the West River, notably the steamer plying between Macao and Sam-shui which on the 20th July, 1899, was pirated, the purser, a Portuguese, being shot and seriously wounded, These attacks are usually made upon Chinese vessels. The modus operandi is almost always the same. At a given point a boatful of armed men board the junk, or call upon the steamer