CO129-300 - Administrator Major Gen Gascoigne Governor Sir Blake - 1900 [7-9] — Page 351

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other Foreign Post offices,"hilst by the first three

packets we had only the Chinese bags: to enclose and

therefore were able to despatch as som as our mails

were bagged.

The inward English and French mails' beep

the office very busy indeed. The town portion of the

correspondence can.... only be sent out 6 or 8 hours after

receipt. If the town portion were sorted and tied up

· properly in HongKong deyràadapdance. in the same mau-

ner as the longkong correspondence is sorted on the

way up from Singapore a great improvement will take pla-

ce in delivery at Shanghai.As matters stand, horever, the

correspondence is tied up alphabetically in more than

one bundle for each alphabet. On receipt many of these

bundles become loose through the handling of the bags

All this, together with the constant application for

individual letters, tend greatly to retard the sorting,

Only Mr.Solly and myself were available to sort and

read out to correspondence to the postmen.Mr.

Dalieto had to deal with the whole of the registered

mail Mr.Rose the unpaid money orders posteresante, at~

tend to enquiries &c. Mr Perpetuo the opening and clos-

ong of the daily local mails for the riverine ports.

There are two learners but they aremore in the way

then of actual assistance.

To take an example:- the last mail re-

ceived at Shanghai per "Coromandel" arrived at Shang-

hai Post office on a baskay Monday at 10.30 am

· A portion of the box holder's mails were not bagged but

tied up, and were roundho

Loose on turning out of the

¦ bags. These and the large sample packets had to be

*

sorted into the boxholder's boxes,which took about

en hour. From that time the town portion was taken in

hand and it was 6 p.m.before the whole had been writ-

ten up in Chinese for delivery. The unpaid was dealt ri

with