34. An attempt was made to comply with the often-expressed wishes of the residents at Pagoda Anchorage, by establishing an honorary Postal Agency there, but various causes prevented its success. Mr. Vice-Consul CARROLL (who was absent at the time) on his return kindly resumed his good offices in distributing the paid letters for that settlement, as lie has done for some years. No further facilities can at present be given.
35. The Coast Ports have been well served by the Steamers of Messrs. DOUGLAS LAPRAIK & Co., which have arrived here with almost the regularity of Contract Packets, the homeward Mail having been missed on one occasion only.
36. A great improvement has been effected in the service to Canton by means of Messrs. SIEMSSEN & Co.'s steamers. It woul! frequently happen that the Mail arrived here just after the Canton boat had left, especially on a Saturday or Sunday, and in the former case the letters would lie in this Office forty-eight hours. Messrs. SIEMSSEN & Co. kindly consented to give notice of the departures of their steamers for Canton, and thus, especially through the summer, it has repeatedly been possible to forward both the English and American Mails to that Port much earlier than could otherwise have been done. 37. There is no legal obligation, to give notice of clearance for Canton or Macao, but such notice (however short) is always valuable to this Department, and generally beneficial to the community.
38. There have not been many complaints during 1875 of the loss of letters, though some fow have been reported missing. No registered letter has been lost; a certain minute percentage of unregistered correspondence will always go astray in spite of all precautions. Nothing causes more errors than the use of sealing-wax, which makes letters stick together, and thus get missorted, tears out the addresses when they are separated, and leads to all sorts of inconvenience. During 1874-75 a firm on the Coast complained of an exceptional series of losses, which, strange to say, began to be reported at Hongkong as soon as the partner to whom the letters were addressed removed here. in a case of this kind, where the lost letters all originate from the same London house, and are of no intrinsic value, there is the strongest ground for believing that they have never been posted.
But
39. The most vexations delay was that of an entire inail for Canton. The steamer Thales clearing for that port, opportunity was taken to send up an extra mail, which contained some important and valuable letters, and which on arrival one of the ship's officers took to the house of the consignee, instead of to the Consulate, handing it to a well-dressed Chinese who claimed to be the Compradore. From that moment it disappeared, nor could search or enquiry bring it to light. The conclusion was inevitable that the correspondence had fallen into the hands of one of the well-dressed thieves who occasionally visit Shamien. A fortnight afterwards, however, the mail was found, intact, in a box containing Municipal Records, nor was it discovered who had placed it there. Measures have been taken to prevent such mishaps.
The
40. Reiterated complaints from Shanghai, as to late arrivals of home newspapers and periodicals, enused a very careful watch to be kept on the Shanghai Contract Mails in their transit through this Office. The result was to establish beyond all doubt the fact that the superscriptions Viâ Brindisi, or Viá Marseilles, on papers are no sort of guide as to the route by which they actually come. inference is obvious. The posting is left till the last minute, and is left just one minute too long; the papers are posted late, and are sent on by the mail next after that for which they are directed. Perhaps no explanation will ever convince disappointed subscribers to periodicals that their corres- pondence is not detained in this Departinent. The facts are, however, as stated above, and the London Uffice has been requested to call the attention of the principal news agents to thein.
41. By every mail more or less papers, books, and patterns are received entirely without covers, the latter having been wholly destroyed by friction in the bags. Persons who regularly forward such articles should be requested to use stout wrappers. On one occasion two whole sacksful consistel of a periodical called the Christian, which was being sent gratis to every Missionary in the world during three months. But the extremic flimsiness of the wrapper defeated the liberal intentions of the donor; very few of the numbers could be sent on, and most of them were left here quclaimed. Measures have been adopted to ensure the delivery of as many such books and periodicals as possible. Every fragment of a cover on which an address can be made out is sent to that address with a circular asking the addressee what he expected to receive, and in this way, and by advertising, some books and papers have been delivered.
42. The loss of a letter for London led to an enquiry as to whether or not it had been posted. and it was found that many letters were sent to the Post Office without receipt or chit book, in boxes which could not be called sealed, although, in several cases, the Hends of Houses where this was the practice were not aware of it. There has been a great improvement, but even now many of the boxes are so sealed that the seal can be pulled off unbroken and stuck on again. The safest plan is to seal on the box itself, without tape or string, and to make the Chinese servants remove the old wax before a fresh seal is applied.
43. A very cominon reply to representations of this kind is. "We have every confidence in our coolie, who has been with us many years." No doubt many Chinese are worthy of very great confi- dence, but too often opportunity makes the thief. The Postal Agency at lankow possessed an infallible coolic, and when, in 1874, heavily stamped letters disappeared again and again, the Agout there rould not and would not believe that the coolie stole them. On Mr. BESAS's taking over the Office, however, he soon detected a system of plunder, and, on searching the man's box, found evidence of a series of thefts of postage stamps, the letters from which they had been removed having been destroyed as the simplest way of avoiding enquiry. The culprit was handed over to the native authorities, and