ux time seems to have long passed when Shanghai could claim to rank before Hongkong except in the matter of climate, though one of our southern contemporaries did recommend the Hongkong Surveyor-General the other day to go up to Shanghai and lean how to make roads. In the fifties when Albert Smith made his run to Hong-Kong and back, the sparse colonists there looked on Shanghai as a paradise, a fact which the great entertainer commemorate in his song, "Why don't you go to Shanghai Now in wealth at least Hongkong has far outstripped us, ad tas raise itself on a pinnacle of Ting to our sober gave. "A Hongkong prosperity that is positively daze share list of the present moment is a simple marvel, to which the cave of jewels in "Aladdin" cannot hope to hold a lamp, and the farther wonder is that every one who is not irretrievably rooted to the soil of Shanghai has not rushed down to the southern colon; to pick up some share of the spoil. "Phere is no more reasonable proportion between the actual value of the stocks of many of the Hongkong companies and the quotations for them in the market than there is between the actual merits of the deceased and the estimate of them on his monument, as a few instances will shew. We cannot take the bank and insurance offices—the investment stocks they keep at about or a little above their intrinsic value, and do not fluctuate unreasonably. It is is the miscellaneous companies that we must call on to adorn our tale. The great rise in the value of land in Hongkong is, we must suppose, at the bottom of the apprecia~ tion in the value of some of these com-anies. There is the Hongkong and Whampoa Dock Company, the intrinsic value of whose shares is $125, while they are quoted at $185; the Hongkong and Kowloong Wharf and Godown Company, worth $100 a share, quoted at $202; the Hongkong Hotel Company, worth $100,' quoted at, $170. hen there is the China Sugar Refining Company, whose shares ate intrinsically worth $100, quoted at $200; the Tce Company, with shares worth $34, quoted at $93; the Rope Company, with shares worth $48, quoted now at $120, after having been somewhere in the neighbourhood of $200. For these intrinsic values we are relying on the very complete report of Messrs. Stokes ind Young, and it is probable that in some cases they are too low, compiled as they are from the companies' latest reports, in which the respective directors may have valued their land too low, One very remarkable company is the China and Manila Steamship Company. Its shares were originally $100 each, and they were reduced for good reasons to $50 cash, one-half of the capital being wiped out; and these shares of $50, whose intrinsic value is $58 each, are quoted at $170. The High Level Tramway Company has at last repaid those who had faith in it while it was struggling; its shares of $50 each, which went considerably below par before the line was finished, have since been up to over $200, and are uow quoted at $150. But it is in the more speculative stocks, the mines and tobacco lands, that the wildest speculation is seen. There is the Punjom mine, with shares of $10 each paid, whose intrinsic value is said to be $7.43, which were below even that a few weeks ago, and which have since been sold at $70, and which were sold on the 5th of March at such incongruous prices as $60, $40 and $55. The Tongking coal mines too have been a good speculation; their shares of 500 francs each are quoted at 1,375 francs. The North Borneo Planting Companies are not so strong as they were, but why they should be at a premium at all is a question, seeing that there must be still plenty of tobacco Jand to be had in that colony at less than they paid for theirs, and there is only a special demand, which may be soon over-satisfied, for the particular tobacco produced in Sumatra and North Borneo. Yet the $25 shares of the East Borneo Company and the Sungei Koyah Company are quoted at $45 and $43 respectively; and the $10 shares of the Labuk Company at $15. Perhaps more remarkable is the fact that the $20 shares of the Steamlaunch Company are quoted at $50. The value of steamers has gone up lately, we know, but it is impossible that the company's tiny fleet can have risen from $40,000, the Company's paid-up capital, to $100,000. The Hongkong Electric Company has been received with such fervour as must have surprised even the promoters, although promoters of electric companies have always been the most sanguine of mortals: not long since the shares of $2 each paid-up were quoted at $20, and at the latest date they had only fallen to $11. Meanwhile the Gas Company's shares have not fallen from the very high premium they have long commanded, so that we must presume that there is still plenty of demand for more light in Hongkong. Most wonderful of all is the success of the Hongkong Land Investment and Agency Company, which must make the directors of the Shanghai Land investment
shares of the latter, Tls. 10 each paid up, Company green with envy. The have been as low as Tls. 7, and have gradually recovered to Tls. 9; but the shares of its sister in Hongkong, the paid-up value of which is $50, are noted at $150; from which we gather that the Company's assets—the Company itself not having been in existence a month—are considered to have appre~ ciated in that time to the extent of two-and-a-half million dollars. It seems almost incredible: meanwhile, it is evident that Hongkong people have no need to go to outlandish places like Punjom and Pahang and Rawang to find gold mines,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.