18th March. Tue British Foreign Office is fairly confident that the negotiations now going on for the opening of Chungking to foreign trade will soon result favourably; but Ichang is still to be the limit of steam navi; tion, and passengers and goods will still lave to be dragged u the rapids by hundreds of men anc women and boys scrambling over the rocks and along the face of the cliffs, doing more shouting than pulling, but not provoking the Szechuan monkeys, who would have been unappeasably incensed by the sight ofa steamer, Meanwhile in Tongking the similar rapids of the Red River are being successfully traversed by vessels of the Kuling's type, but of less power, built in Haiphong; from which as a text the Foreign Ministers in Peking may preach, if they please, to the Tsung-li Yamen a sermon on the advantages which an Asiatic country derives from a foreign protectorate. To go still farther south, they may explain to the Yamen what the Australians have done at Raub. The few foreigners who know the country predicted that the adventurers from Australia could never get their machinery up to Raub, The only communication was by a river full of rapids which no boat had ever been up, and which could only be descended. on bamboo rafts with incessant portages. The Australians were not to be daunted by a little thing like that; when they came to a rapid, they planted their windlass at the head of it and"wound their machinery up, and have already got it at the mines. So, but for the obstructiveness of the Viceroy of Szechuan, we should have had steamers running now for the past two years between Chungking and Ichang.
Sir Thomas Wade's provision in the Chefoo Convention for the inclusion of Chungking in the list of treaty ports was ambiguous and unsatisfactory enough, and we know now that it was intentionally so; but at any rate he did not. put the cart before the horse, as is to be done ifthe present negotiations result successfully. It is perhaps not obvious at first sight how cleverly the Chinese are managing this. They know perfectly well. that buying the Kuling, even with the stipulation—if any such stipulation has been made, which we doubt—that the Upper Yangtze Company shall be wound up at once, would not prevent, would rather encourage, their having to buy off a succession of steamers, unless they could ensure that the British government would not back up any future applicants for a permit to navigate the Upper Yangtze. The only way was to offer the British government some inducement to vary Sir Thomas Wade's couvention, and this they have done. We must presume, too, that they have satisfied themselves that no other nationality will make use of the opening that Lord Salisbury is going to allow to be closed. Under the most favoured nation clause any other Power could have demanded a permit for its subjects or citizens; and we presume that the Tsung-li Yamen has made sure that if Great Britain consents to the withdrawal of the clause, that withdrawal is universally effective. America is the natural home of the stern wheel steamer,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.