We are now once more in the fall blaze of a Shanghai summer, with all its concomitant disadvantages and ills, A Ligh range of thermometer is under very fow circumstances really enjoyed by natives of temperate. climates, and must always be attended by more'or less suffering and inconvenience.
Who the mercury rises above ninety every one feels to a certain extent oppressed and on a seething' mud flat like that on which Shanghai is situated' the atmosphere under sich conditions be. comes well nigh intolerable. -The large majority of our readers will doubtless bear us out in the assertion' that' it is not the mero heat of a Shanghai eummer that they dread... Some of the pleasantest and healthiost- days are among the hottest, when a bright sua. shines in a cloudless sky, aiid a fresh, dry breeze. enlivens the jaded, noryos. Indeed on many people the effect-of a high temperature is distinctly good, appearing actually to increase their
tion of the blood.. What is: the real vitality and premiate a healthy, citoula. carse of Shanghai during' th sumtier months is the utter absence of ozone from the air; when the lunge. feel as though choked, up" witl wool, and one gasps. with a suggestive of having been buried alive in a warm vault full of boiled malaria, It is the airlessness of Shanghai that eigners. This when a storm is threatening, a1 we hope for speedy relief; but happens that the wished-for tempest, after a few hours of distant thunder. ing and o little lightning, " passes by on the other side," leaving us still panting and unrefreshed, The chat occasioned by this feeling of suffocation is often quite unnecessarily aggravated at night, by the fact that the Ohinese are permitted by the Mauioipal. polioa to do all in their power to disturb the rest of foreigners and prevent' them feom getting deep, ' Chinanien' ragh fall tilt under. the open windowa: of houses, shouting, yelling, and shrieking at the utmost pitch of" their voices Carriages and jinriokebas keep up ail in cessant racket the whole night through. Restaurants and gambling-honses.contribute their fall share to the midnight clamour, and the thay who lived within aastone's throw of sny one such place is to be pitied, if quiet is for him a necessary condition of repes. Difioult as it may be to sleep with the' glade' 90° and no air to breathe, it. becomes absolutely impossible with the frightful din which: Chinamen are allowed to keep up, and which the -police, as' far as we can discover, make not, the slightest effort to repress. It is during such conditions as these that the isola. tion of Shanghai makes: itself most realised, We are' absolutely' without any means of escape for a few. baure into comparative. quist, or a fresher and less enervating air. The: li Woosung railway would "hava' b 'a wonderfal boon to us on."many a bad day in summer. ° A trip down the line would at least have lauded us where we' could enjoy a whiff of thing like sea air, and had it. bet existence during the. past. for, there is no-doubt that by: this. time'a little settlement of: bungalows" would have sprang "up" tiest' the' "getiidty [of the Yang-toze wh Bi lento could
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.