SHANGHAI.
The most northerly of the five ports opened to foreign trade by the British Treaty of Nanking, is situate at the extreme south-east corner of the province of Kiang-su, in latitude 31.15 north, and longitude 121.29 east of Greenwich, at the junction of the rivers Hwang-po and Woosung (the latter called by foreigners the Soochow Creek), about twelve miles above the village of Woosung, where their united waters debouch into the estuary of the Yangtsze. The soil is alluvial and the untry perfectly flat, the nearest eminence that can be called a hill being distant clout nineteen miles. The river opposite the city and foreign settlements, once a narrow canal, was, some fifteen years ago, 1,800 feet broad at low water, but has been rapidly narrowing till it is now only 1,200 feet. The Soochow Creek, which is shown by old records to have bem at one time at least three miles across, has now a breadth of only a hundred yards. The average water on the bar at Woosung at high water springs is nineteen foot, the greatest depth of late years being twenty-three feet. The bar is the cause of heary logs to shipowners and merchants through the detention of ocean steam.s. After repeated efforts to induce the Chinese authorities to deeper it, a dredger was recently but for the purpose, but has not yet been brought into use.
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Shan--the name means "upper sea" or "near the sea" became a hsien or third rate clay in the fourteenth century, and the walls, which are three and a half miles in cirenit, with seven gates, were erected at the time of th Japanese inv in the latter part of the sixteenth century. It had been an important seal of trade for many centuries before the incursion of foreigners. It was captured by the Brit så forces on 19th June, 1842.
The ground selected by Captain Balfour, the first British Consul, for a Settle- ment for his nationals, lies about half a mile north of the city walls, between the Yang-king-pang and Soochow Creeks, and extends backward from the river to a ditch connecting the two, called the Defence Creek, thus forming what may be called an island, a mile square. The port was formally declared open to trade on the 17th November, 1843. The French subsequently settled on the ground between the city walls and the British Concession, and in exchange for help rendered in driving out the rebels who had seized the city in 1853, got a grant of the land extending for about a mile to the south between the city walls and the river. They have since by purchase extended the bounds of the Concession westward to the "Ningpo Josa House," a mile from the river. Later on the American rented land immediately north of Socchow Creek, in the district called Hongkew, so that the ground now occupied by foreigners extends for about four miles on the left bank of the river. The lord in the British Settlement was assessed in November, 1832 at Tls. 10,340,650, that in Hongkew at Tls. 3,550,660, an advance since 1880 of seventy per cent. The assessord value of the land in the French Concession was Tls. 2,306,677 in 1880. The Chamber of Commerce in 1882 valued the lands in the three Settlements at Tla. 24,355,000 and the merchandise in stock at Tls. 32,615,000, ingether equal to fourteen and a quarter millions sterling. Most of the land along the out ude roads and at Pootung, on the opposite bank of the river, is now also rented by freigners, but natives have recently been considerable purchasers of landed property within the Settlements. All grounds belongs nominally to the Emperor of Chine, but i rented in perpetuity, a tax of fifteen hundred copper cash, equal to about a dollar and a quarter, per mow, being paid to the Government annual About six mow equal one English acre.
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The approach by sea to Shanghai is now well lighted and buoyed and, although it has not yet becoine, as Inspector-General Sir Rober Hart stated in one of his despatches it would, "as safe as a walk down Regent Street when the gas is lit," the dangers of the ever shifting banks and shoals are as well guarded as can be expected. Under the superintendence of the Engineering departme: of the Custonia, light- houses have been erected on West Volcano, Showeishan, North Saddle, Gutzlaff, Bonham, and Steep Islands, and at Woosung, There are so two lightships in the Yangtsze below Woosung,
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