Directory_and_Chronicle_1882 — Page 360

SHANGHAI.

The most northerly of the five ports opened to foreign trade by the British Treaty of Nanking, is situate at the extreme south-east corner of the province of Kaug-su, in latitude 31.41 north, and longitude 126.29 east of Greenwich, at the junction of the rivers Hwa g-po and Woosung (the latter called by foreigners the Soochow Creek), about twelve mules above the village of Woosung, where their united waters debouch into the e tuary of the Yangtsze. The soil is alluvial and the country perfectly flat, the nearest eminence that can be called a bill being distant about nineteen miles. The river opposite the city and foreign settlements, once a narrow canal, was, some twelve years ago, 1,800 feet broad at low water, but has been rapidly narrowing till it is now only 1,200 feet. The Soochow Creek, which is shown by old records to have been at one time at least three miles across, has now a breadth of only a hundred yards. The average water on the bar at Woosung at high water springs is nineteen feet, the greatest depth of late years being twenty-three feet. The bar is the cause of heavy loss to shipowners and mere ants through the detention of ocean steamers, and repeated efforts have been made to induce the Chinese authorities to deepen it. As there appears no chance of their doing so except under compulsion, which foreign governments seem disinclined to use, the foreign residents have agreed to tax their trade for the purpose, and the proposal is now under the consideration of the Ministers at Peking.

Shanghai-the name means " upper soa" or "ear the sea"--became a hsien or third rate city in the fourteenth century, and the walls, which are three and a half miles in circuit, with seven gates, were erected at the time of the Japanese invasion, in the latter part of the sixteenth century. It had been an important seat of trade for many centuries before the incursion of foreigners.

The ground selected by Captain Balfour, the first British Consul, for a Settle ment for his nationals, lies about half a mile north of the city walls, between the Yang-king-pang and Soochow Creeks, and now extends backwards from the river to a ditch connecting the two, called the Defence Creek, thus forming what may be called an island, a mile square. The port was formally declared open to trade on the 17th November, 1843. The French subsequently settled on the ground between the city walls and the British Concession, and in exchange for help rendered in driving out the rebels who had seize the city in 1853, got a grant of the land extending for about a mile to the south between the city walls and the river. They have since by purchase extended the unds of the concession westward to the "Ningpo Joss House," a mile from the river. Later on the Americans rented land immediately north of Soochow Creek, in the district called Hongkew, so that the ground now occupied by foreigners extends for about four miles on the left bank of the river. The land in the British Settlement was assessed in 1880 at Tls. 6,116,862, that in Hongkew at Tls. 1,944,625, and tha! in the French Concession at Tls. 2,306,677. Most of the land along the outside roads an at Pootuug, on the opposite bank of the river, is now also rented by foreigners, but natives have recently been consider- able purchasers of landed property within the Settlements. All ground belongs nominally to the Emperor of China, but is rented in perpetuity, a tax of fifteen hundred copper cash, equal to about a dollar and a quarter, per mow, being paid to the Government annually. About six mow equal one English acre.

The approach by sea to Shanghai is now well lighted and buoyed and, although it has not yet become, as Mr. Inspector-General Hari stated in one of bis despatches it would, "as safe as a walk down Regent Street when the gas is lit," the dangers of

Page 360Page 361