CHAPTER IX.
SHANGHAI. NINGPO. HANKOW. THE YANGTSZE.
Steam traffic in the China Sea—In the wake of a typhoon—Shanghai—Notes of its early history— Japanese raids—Shanghai foreign settlement—Paul Sü, or 'Su-kwang-ki'—Shanghai city—Ningpo— Native soldiers—Snowy valley—The Mountains— Azaleas—The monastery of the snowy crevice—The thousand-fathom precipice—Buddhist monks—The Yangtsze Kiang—Hankow—The Upper Yangtsze, Ichang—The Gorges—The Great Tsing-tan Rapid—Mystic mountain lights—A dangerous disaster—Kwei-fu— Our return—Kiukiang—Nanking: Its Arsenal—The Death of Tsing-kwo-fan—Chinese Superstition.
The opening of the Suez Canal wrought as great a change in the China trade as in the commerce of the Malayan Archipelago; and nowhere is this change more marked than in the carrying traffic from port to port along the coasts of China. Old lumbering junks, lorchas and even square-rigged sailing ships have given place to the splendidly equipped steamers of the local companies that ply regularly between the different stations from Hongkong to Newchang ; and then innumerable vessels, owned, not a few of them, by private firms, as well as by native and European companies, frequently find lucrative employment when the tea and silk seasons have not yet begun, either in running between the treaty ports, or in making short voyages to the rice-markets of Indo-China.
It was my good fortune to make a coasting trip to Shanghai
