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south of the Shanghai-Nanking Railway Company's land. Wooden bunding is being constructed to a creek running parallel with the railway company's boundary and along the Cantonese cemetery, and apparently connecting with the Soochow Creek, It would appear as if the ditch thus formed was to be used as a duct from the Soochow Creek to the proposed waterworks.
It should be noted that the Shanghai Waterworks Company (Limited) supplies water to the greater portion of the district round North Szechuan road and the rifle
range.
Drainage. Whatever sewers have been laid appear to have been constructed I will take one case in particular. without any regard to the principles of sanitation. Some five years ago the council laid a 3 ft. 10 in. diameter sewer along Haining Road, with its outfall into the Chuen Hong Pang, which ran along the northern boundary of the settlement. About two years ago the Chapei authorities decided to fill in the creek and construct a road on the site. Previous to constructing the road, they laid a 2 ft. 3 in. and 1. ft. 6 in. egg-shaped sewer for 1,600 feet in the bed of the old creek with its outfall to a dead end. The tubes were not laid to an even gradient, but ran up hill and down, with a result that the sewer is practically one long cesspool containing obnoxious black sewage. Plan No. 5 shows the lines and levels to which the sewer was laid.
What might appear to be face walls to culverts going under roads are in reality only frames for sluices which impound the water in what have been drainage creeks, in order, apparently, that it may be let off to flush sewers.
General-As far as public works and sanitary conditions are concerned, there can be no comparison between the two sections of Chapei above referred to. In the one case we have what up to quite recently was an undeveloped district where there was plenty of scope for the Chinese to show what they could do to lay out a settlement. On the other hand we have a district which has been gradually developed under foreign administration as a result of a necessary expansion of the settlement in a northerly direction, though, as I have said before, the Chinese attitude has throughout been one of obstruction. A walk through the respective districts will show the difference between squalor under Chinese and cleanliness and sanitation under foreign adininistration.
CHAS. H. GODFREY,
Engineer and Surveyor.
July 29, 1910.
Shanghai Land Investment Company to Secretary, Shanghai Municipal Council.
Shanghai, October 14, 1910. Dear Sir,
WE enclose herewith a petition signed by 100 registered owners of land under foreign title-deeds in Paoshan, and representing an area approaching 3,000 mou, a mouage exceeding the entire area of the British settlement as originally granted by the Chinese Government for foreign occupation. The circumstances which have led us to draw up this petition are reported in the "Municipal Gazette " of the 14th July last, and formed the subject-matter of a letter from the chairman of the council to the senior consul.
One of the worst features of this unauthorised entry of Chinese officials on foreign-owned property, as affecting the landlords, is the attempt made by the native (Paoshan) police to collect police tax. Up to the present this tax has been collected only as a voluntary tax, but in dealing with poorer classes of Chinese a voluntary tax collected by any Chinese official differs very little from a compulsory The tax following the unauthorised numbering of Chinese houses by the native officials gave it the appearance of an officially imposed tax, and as such it was difficult for our tenants to refuse to pay it, although they were informed by us that the tax was an imposition, and that they need not recognise it.
tax.
We are, &c.
The Shanghai Land Investment Company (Limited),
GIBB, LIVINGSTONE, AND CO., Agents.
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Declaration by Owners of Land registered in Foreign Consulates.
In view of a recent attempt by the native authorities to exercise police functions upon foreign-owned property, we, the undersigned, owners of land registered in foreign consulates, in the district known as Chapei, and that portion of the Paoshan district in which the Chapei constabulary functions, or attempts to function, record our objection to irregular entry upon our property by these or any other servants of the native authorities, as an infringement of articles 21, 18, and 12 of the Tien-tsin treaties of 1858 with Great Britain, America, and France, which define the procedure to be observed in respect to any native offenders known to be upon British and other foreign-owned property, and state that it shall be held inviolable.
[Signatures follow.]
Shanghai, October 14, 1910.
* Not reproduced.
536
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