25
6
There is little chance for further trouble in this district with so many soldiers, unless rebellion breaks out, when we believe the troops would join the insurgents.
The provincial Judge Kiang is an able and just man, and is trying to settle things on a permanent basis. The Roman Catholics may not agree with his measures, but we feel that he is taking the right course—not ruthlessly and indiscriminately wiping out the place, but demanding that the gentry shall deliver the offenders or be punished as criminals themselves. This thing has all happened by the connivance of these men; now the responsibility is put on the right shoulders.
Should write you more fully, but time fails. Thank you for kind letters of love and sympathy.
Dear Sir,
Inclosure 4 in No. 1.
Rev. W. S. Horne to Consul Werner,
China Inland Mission, Kanchow, November 15, 1907.
I am sorry not to be able to send a better report of the progress of restriction of opium. Every official is throwing his weight into the anti-Boxer crusade.
We thank you most heartily for what you have done for us from the beginning. We have all been caught napping in the end. The Nankang Magistrate is largely to blame for the whole movement; his anti-foreign attitude gave strength and speed to the Boxer uprising. Judge Kiang has afforded Mr. Marshall and myself every protection, and got all the foreigners out safely except the French—or, rather, Italian—father. He has acted the perfect gentleman throughout; we are deeply grateful to him for the speedy and satisfactory settlement so soon reached after the subsidence of Boxerism. He is still the only man who is doing anything to restore order in the district. Had it not been for your request that he should remain to suppress the movement everything would have been lost, and few foreigners would have escaped alive. He was the only man of any use both during the riot and after it. Even now these men sent by capital and from Nanking are not in it with him. He has better abilities and is ever so much more sincere; one can place confidence in him, which is more than one can say for those otherwise appointed. He is now in Tsongi district, over 200 li from Kanchow, following up dispersed Boxers. His methods of restoring peace commend themselves to all, foreigner and people alike. Rebellion was the ultimate aim of the Boxers, but they lacked organization and leadership. They rather depended on a simultaneous uprising all over, thus overwhelming officials. Just how near we were to that we do not know,
Thanking you again for timely help, yours, &c.,
0
(Signed)
W. S. HORNE.
This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.]
AFFAIRS OF CHINA.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[3388]
No. 1.
[January 31.]
SECTION 2.
0.
7780
4 MAR 081
Sir J. Jordan to Sir Edward Grey.—(Received January 31.)
Rec2 (No. 5.) Sir,
Peking, January 1, 1908.
IN continuation of my despatch No. 584 of the 20th December, 1907, I have the honour to transmit to you herewith copy of a letter which the Directors of the Huangpu Conservancy Board have addressed to the Senior Consul at Shanghae, forwarding the comments of Mr. de Rijke, Engineer-in-chief to the Board, on the Memorandum of the German shipping firms, which formed Inclosure No. 2 in my above-mentioned despatch.
Sir,
Inclosure in No. 1.
I have, &c. (Signed) J. N. JORDAN.
Whangpoo Conservancy Board to M. Siffert.
Office of the Whangpoo Conservancy Board, Shanghae, December 6, 1907.
IN reply to your letter of the 19th ultimo, inclosing copy of a Memorandum, addressed to His Imperial German Majesty's Consul-General by shipping firms at Shanghae, regarding Conservancy work, we beg to inclose herewith, for the information of the Consular Body, a few comments on the said Memorandum which, on our suggestion, Mr. J. de Rijke, Engineer-in-chief to the Conservancy Board, has drawn up.
We have, &c. (Signed) LIANG YU HO,
HOBSON,
Directors of the Conservancy Board.
A few Comments on the Memorandum of the German Shipping Firms, dated October 26, 1907.
In this paper it is said that the Whangpoo, in its present fairway from the Arsenal to the Yang-tsze, has throughout a depth of at least 18 feet at lowest water. Lowest water in the Lower Whangpoo is equal to the zero of the gauge at the Woosung Signal Station. Depth throughout must include that in the passage over the Woosung inner bar. The Harbour-master can tell exactly the depth there at lowest low water all during the summer and up to the present day, but I believe it must have been about a fathom less than 18 feet.
That in later years the Kajow bar has disappeared is quite true; at present the depth there and that of the ship-channel lower down is not much different from the surveys of 1893 and 1887.
It is also true that the junk-channel has shallowed, as I reported to the Board. In a river with a bottom so heavy, mobile, and shifting as that of the Whangpoo such changes are not so singular; and yet, notwithstanding these changes in the Gough Island reach, I am following the principle expressed in my Report of 1898, paragraph 36, which says "that in case this section of the river has to be improved by regulating works, by which to form one uniform channel instead of the two, that channel must be the junk-channel, and not the other, the ship-channel."
This is Plan (B).
But in the Lower Whangpoo the plan (B) of 1898 is not the same as the plan (B) of 1906 now in execution. The works proposed last year to guide the stream over the
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