Directory_and_Chronicle_1845 — Page 396

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are narrower, and a few may be twelve or fifteen. The principal ones are flagged or paved with stone, or laid with brick or broken tiles. The latter are placed with their edges upwards; and, though having a rough appearance, make a very good and substantial road and withal cheaply constructed.

Narrow as the streets are, they serve all manner of purposes, and at times are rendered nearly impassable on account of the messes of of goods and chattels, the various handicrafts, retailers, fortune- tellers, and other nameless riffraff that crowd into them. Besides, like the ditches and canals, they are the receptacles of rubbish offal and, and serve other purposes, of which it were a shame to speak ; and useful as they may be, are in all other countries thrown into the back ground, and concealed from public view.

The houses vary in size and quality from beggarly hovels, only a few feet square, covered with tiles and thatch, to large and comino- dious habitations. extending over several acres. The general cha- racter of the architecture is purely Chinese, in which the tent form is most clearly preserved, and much more conspicuously in Shánghái, than in some of the southern cities of the empire. The style is unique, and whether the building be great or small, the same model serves equally well for all and for each. An inferior dwelling of one story may be taken as a sample of the general character of the whole. A small site of ground is cleared and leveled, say eighteen feet deep from the street and twelve broad. For each of the long sides, or ends of the proposed house, seven poles are erected, one in the center projecting up to support the ridge; then, at the distance of three feet on either side, two more, and then at another equal in- terval, two more, and again two more, giving seven erect poles, three on each side of the central; at the other end of the house, seven more are placed, corresponding to the first seven.

The ridge pole is then laid on, and parallel to six more beams three on each side, their ends resting on the tops of the erect poles, the beams on either side of the ridge being laid so as to support the roof. Upon these, cleats or slender rafters are nailed, and tile placed without line, cement or fastenings, and thus the roof is completed. Between the poles, at each end, a double layer of bricks, cemented with mud and lime, goes up, no space for windows being left open. Some panels are then put up in front and rear, with partitions inside, and the house is completed. Such is a sketch of the archietecture of Shang- hái. From this single room of one story, you must go on to add and multiply, till you can count them by scores, and have them also a second story, and sometimes even a third story high.