CO129-300 - Administrator Major Gen Gascoigne Governor Sir Blake - 1900 [7-9] — Page 352

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with on the following day.As regards outward mails the -hour of departure of the S.S."Tonkin" was fortunate- ly fixed at 4 p.m. instead of at daylight that day,

wirt hence there no late hours on this occasion. It is an

enomaly that at Shanghai the hours of closing mails are furnished by the N.C.Daily News. The Post office 2 hasapparently no say inthe matter, neither do the ship-

•ping companies notify the Post office ofthe departure

of their steamers. In order to be sure that the steam-

er isleaving at the advertised hour in the newspaper it is necessary to refer to the customs clearance list.

Taking advantage of the number of

learnersand by making them stay a little over time on the eve of the departure, I dapat caused all the cor- respondence already posted to be made up and bagged

and by thus doing, with the learners looking on to see how the different countries are made up and sent,a

great relief was experienced on the mail day itself

and the pressure død not appear so great as on the previous mail,

I would respectfully point out that the presunt urgent necessity at Shanghai is a few more trained hands. Mr. Dalieto, the only one, is

entirely taken up with the registered and insured por-

tion of the correspondence and makes up the closed re- gistered mails-after that, he is available for the gen- eral work on e mail day. Should it happen that he is taken suddenly ill, Mr.Solly will inddeed be hard -

pressed to close a mail for Europe.

I have no hesitation in saying that should an inward and outward mail clash on the same

day the delivery of the town portion of the mail and all the registered and unpaid, will have to wait until - the outward mail has been despatched.

The Chinese subsaduery coins at

Shanghai are a greater nuisance there than there. The