Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 430

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Men and Things in Shanghai.

JULY,

authorities. These, always a public nuisance in this part of the empire, have caused trouble of late by being made a means of claiming a right to the soil. The process seems to be this: a coffin is carried out of the city, and laid down on any unoccupied site that is found most convenient: when occasion requires, a second, a third, or a fourth follow; by and by boundary marks are set up, and the ground includ- ed is claimed as sacred to the tenants of the coffins. Quarrels and Jawsuits about the right of soil follow.

Small pox has proved fatal in numerous cases among the Chinese, and in one at least among the foreign residents of Shinghái. There appears to be a want of proper attention to its almost certain antidote, vaccination. Dr. Lockhart has done the utmost in his power to bring this within the reach of the people, but multitudes seem not to care whether it be secured by them and their children or not.

Cuses of fever, too, have been unusually frequent and fatal, consider- ing that it is yet but the beginning of the hot season. This is doubt- less owing to a variety of causes; while the rains have not been want- ing, there have been an unusual number of hot days, and large numbers of both men and women, called into the fields to labor, have been much exposed to the scorching rays of the sun. Laboring in this manner by day, and at night retiring to their low, damp hovels, very many of the poor laborers have sickened and died.

The recent excavation of the moat and ditches of the city, it is thought by many and with good reason, has been the principal cause of the present sickness. By proper management, the water channels of the city might be made to contribute largely to the convenience and health of the inhabitants; for want of care and by mismanagement, however, they sometimes become nuisances: such, aud in a remarkable degree, have they been made at the present juncture, just at the opening of the hot season. Instead of being kept always open and daily flooded and washed by each tide--as might easily be done-the moat and all the ditches are allowed to fill and clog and stagnate when in this state some six or eight weeks ago, the magistrate and his friends undertook their excavation. What a delving and carrying out of mud and filth has there been! Not only have all these sinks of pollution been stir- red up from their lowest depths, but the whole black and sickening contents thereof have been poured out like lava upon the city walls, and on every vacant patch of ground that could be founed, both in the city and along the banks of the river. Horribile visu!

Some new features have been exhibited in the phases of society here, or perhaps I should say, old features have come up under new as-