Siz Brooke Robertson took an opportunity, in the spring, to visit the ports of Haiphong and Hanoi, lately opened by the French in Tonquin; and his report has been printed by the Government. Both places are at the head of the Gulf of Tonquin—Hanoi on the banks of the Songkoi, or Red River, which is relied on as the most effectual trade route with Yunnan; Haiphong on the banks of the Cua-cam, which is a branch of the former stream.
The two places are connected by water, but the route is 145 miles in length, while they are only 60 miles apart as the crow flies. Haiphong is the highest point to which vessels drawing 14 feet can ascend the Cua-cam; and for the present it is the shipping port of Hanoi, From the extensive works under construction there, Sir Brooke Robertson inferred that the French intend it to be the anchorage for foreign vessels; but the Red River, which debouches into the sea about twelve miles to the southward of the Cua.cam, is, he says, a fine stream, and he can imagine no greater difficulty in its navigation to Hanoi, than the Yangtsze offers to Hankow. There is a rise and fall in the freshets of from 26 ft. to 30 ft. The river is at its lowest from December to May, enormous stretches of sand-bands lining the stream, and points of them jutting almost into the centre. About May the melted snow and ico from the mountains of Upper Tonquin and Yunnan come down, and the river rises rapidly, attaining a height of thirty feet, and very frequently carrying away the banks, and flooding' the country, to the great destruction of lifo and property.
Hanoi is evidently the more import. ant place, and we will go on to read Sir Brooke's description. "The streets are, he says, wide and the houses good, and well built of brick in some of the principal streets, but there are numerous ones where the shops are merely mat erections in the usual Tonquinese stylo; with one exception—the main street from the river where the Chinese live—the streets are unpaved, and in wet weather almost impassable from the depth of the mud; but as shoes are an exception with the Annamites, this drawback to European comfort does not affect them. The sedan-chair of China, so convenient for locomotion, is unknown, the high authorities and those who can afford it being carried in a hammock of silk or, hemp network suspended on a pole supported on the shoulders of two or four bearers, and inclosed in silk or cotton curtains. There is a great deal of stir and movement in the streels; the shops are well stocked with articles of native workmanship, especially ban boo work in all its varieties, silk and cotton piece goods, paper, pewter, and glass ware, boxes, drums of all sizes richly painted, lacquered and gilt and coarse crockery and china ware Fowls, ducks, geese, oxen, and pigs are both plentiful and cheap, will abundance of fruit, bananas vegetables, and fish. Rice is
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.