Wauere are we living? The question is worth asking; for though the answer may seem to be simple and obvious, it will be found on reflection to be com. plicated and difficult to determine. Are we not residents in the foreign Settle. ment of Shanghai; the limits of that Settlement having beau assigned by Treaty, enclosing an area in which foreigners oan live in safely and com fort, a carry on legitimate basis with facility and despatch And are we not therefore correct in the conclu. sion that the 120,000 Chinese whom we see occupying, crowding, absolutely mouopolising the same ares, are here of course by sufferance only, and subject the while to foreign regulations and foreign convenience Or is this all a mistake? Is not the so-called Settlement rather, Chinese ground; the black haired race lords the soil; and the few foreign fam. graciously allowed to ive amonget the " ised" masses, on condition of their good behaviour, and willingness to conform to Chinese habit avd custom? Whiob theory is the correct one? We venture to think that any intelligent stranger visiting our port, and observing the sight and sounds of the place, would uni tingly say that both theories seem to be correct, with the natural result of much confusion and perplexity.
The long of palaces, rivaling Calontta's Garden Reach; fringed with gardens and green award on which no feet but those of privileged obs, and manicipal gardouera and influential policemen may tread; the awe with which the busy aware of Chinese in the streets regard the baton of English sergeant or Sik con. stable; the regulation of traffic in the great thoroughfare, the roads lined with good surface drains and the scavengers carts plying their usefal but unsavoury task before the can is up; the marks on every door of Municipal Regulation, and the taxes paid promptly and oleerfally to the powerfal and beneficent Council by this vast mass of Ohinese, more than evongh to fill a Bristol with people—what does all this mean bat a foreign settlement, in foreign occupation, under foreign con. trol, and where by an act of grace alone the Chinese are allowed to live?
But when from sight we turn to souud, at once the tables are turned and the Chinaman has his howling, screeching, hullabalooing revenge. He shouts in the streets by day and by night, whether there be a subject for his discourse or not, as loud as he likes, and that is very loud; whilst the guardians of the peace, who will whop vigorously a loitering coolie, either hear not, or else delight to hear, the howling, Let our intelligent visitor plant his observing person, and open his reflective
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.