Sessional_Paper_1886-1887 — Page 248

245

15. A Committee consisting of the Acting Harbour Master, the Director of the Observatory, and the Postmaster General was appointed to examine into the question of signalling the English mails from Kowloon Point. It was found impossible to devise any efficient and inexpensive signal which would not clash with the weather signals made at that station. It was therefore recommended that the use of the Kowloon Point gun for mail signals should be discontinued. Fortunately no inconvenience has arisen from the arrival of an unsignalled mail, a circumstance which may be due to an unusual freedom from fog during the year. It is to be hoped that some day all difficulties of this kind will be obviated by telegraphic communication with the projected Gap Rock lighthouse, which would give the community here four hours notice of the approach of the mail.

16. In the meantime a direct telephone line between this Office and the Peak signal station is much to be desired. What with clouds, night-fall, flags blowing straight on end, and other circumstances, the Post Office too often obtains the minimum rather than the maximum of information from the Peak.

17. There have been two casualties during the year. The steamer Douglas was lost on February 10th with coast mails on board, which were not recovered. Communication between the Coast Ports and Hongkong having been interrupted for several days by the Chinese New Year holidays. the mails were unfortunately exceptionally heavy. The Madras was lost with a mail for this Office from Nagasaki. Most of the correspondence was subsequently recovered by H. M. S. Midge, and forwarded to destination.

18. The service to Japan has gone on fairly well, the mails having been forwarded without many excessive delays. The English mail of January 22nd was sent on to Kobe in the City of Rio (via Yokohama). It would have been better to keep it here a couple of days longer for the Zambesi, but at the time of its despatch it was not known when that vessel would start. The English mail of September 3 was sent to Yokohama in the Claymore, whereas it should have been kept for the Stettin.. The German service was a little new at the time, the Stettin was not notified, and it escaped notice that there would be a German Packet leaving within a day or two. As far as is known these were the only occasions on which this Office failed to secure the earliest opportunity for a mail for Japan except one instance (the French mail for Yokohama of October 22nd) in which it was so doubtful which steamer would arrive first that this office would not take the responsibility of diverting the mail from its ordi- nary route via Kobe. Against these may be set the fact that, on July 13th, the Agent of the Pacific Mail Co. courteously detained the San Pablo for the arrival of the English mail, thus saving the Yokohama community a delay of probably at least two days.

19. The abolition of accounts with the London Office, referred to in the last Annual Report as under consideration, has been carried out, and our relations with the United Kingdom are now simply those of the Postal Union, with a special payment of £6,000 a year in addition. The saving of labour, copying, &c. is very considerable.

20. The state of several of our Postal Agencies, specially those of Amoy and Foochow, was taken into serious consideration by the Government on the earnest representations of this Department. It was felt that the existing condition of affairs could not be allowed to go on, and that, unsatisfactory as it might be for Hongkong to be saddled with the whole expense of improving these Agencies, improved they must be-or abolished. The Estimates for this year would accordingly have embodied provision for a considerable increase of staff at Amoy, had not a proposal been made which promised an entirely new departure.

*

21. This was a proposal from Mr. Commissioner KOPSCH, on behalf of the Chinese Government, to take over, as a step towards the establishment of a national Post Office, the Postal work carried on by this Government at eight of the Treaty Ports of China. The report of this Department on that proposal will be found in the Appendix ( C ́).

22. Mr. KOPSCH's scheme has of course raised much discussion, especially in Shanghai, where a public meeting was convened to consider the matter. The tone both of this meeting, and of the articles and correspondence in the newspapers, was most fair, reasonable, and moderate. Some of the objections raised possess much force, though only one has as yet been put forward which can be regarded as a real obstacle to the proposal.

23. How China may elect to develop her Postal system is not in any special way the affair of Hongkong, but a single remark on the subject may perhaps be allowable. To demand that so huge an Empire shall be covered with a network of courier services organised by the Imperial Government before that Government may attempt the much more modest task of carrying on the small coast service at present conducted by this Colony, is, as one of the speakers at Shanghai graphically put it, like insisting that a boy shall not go near the water till he has learned to swim. Any successful postal system in China must begin from the coast, and with steamer communication. It may then possibly be pushed up the rivers as steamers are admitted to them, and extended to a few of the shorter land routes, especially as railways are introduced. To make haste slowly should be the motto, and the avoidance of huge schemes like a pestilence the policy of the Chinese Post Office of the immediate future.

* These remarks must not be taken as implying any reflection on the officers in charge of the Agencies in question, whose only fault was their inability to do impossibilities, or to be in two places at once.