When in 1843 the port of Shanghai was opened to foreign trade, the merchants who first came to settle were for a time domiciled in the native city. Such a residence was in no way suitable either for business or comfort, and Captain Balfour, H.B.M.'s Consul, expedited as much as sible the negotiations for a site for the intended Settlement, the regulations for which were drawn up and accepted in the following year. These Regulations did not foresee the growth of any important city, these main provisions extended to giving the settlers, inder, the title of ommitteo of Roads and Jetties, the privilege of looking after their own external affairs. It was anticipated that a few houses with jetties attached would be all that was required for carrying on the business of the port, and had affairs continued on those lines a sort of mixed residence, as grew up afterwards at Foochow, where no land regulations have ever been elaborated, might have been the result. 'The spirit' of the day was exhibited at the very first meeting of the residents when Captain Bulfour's suggestion that roads of a respectable width should be laid out, was overruled by a suggestion of Mr. McDonaid's, that the residents were not likely to require roads and that passageways with enough for two chests of tea to pass were all that were likely to be required. The consequence was that a sort of comPROMISE was come to and that a few roads of two Chinese chang, 22 feet, in width were laid out. One indeed, where the junk owning inhabitants had long had a rope-walk for heir own use, was, owing to this accidental circumstance, laid' out straight and of a width of about 30 feet, bat the others followed the lines of the native footpath, oras in the case of what afterwards became the Nanking Road followed the course of irrigation creeks. A low-lying patch of ground at the junction of the Soochow reek with the Hwangpoo was taken as the site of the future British Consulate, and this formed the starting point of the new Settlement. A more unpromising locality for the site of the future metropolis of the trade of Northern China could hardly be conceived. The Soochow Creek, even so late as 1844, was more important as sheet of water than it has since become. A paved road, known as the Shahloo, or stone road, led from the city to the site of the Louza or Old Barrier on the Soochow Creek, which was here crossed by a ferry. The Louza had been placed too low down on the Creek, and Chinese engineering skill was not sufficient to keep it in order, so that it had been moved some mile and a quarter higher up to the site now called the Sinza or New Barrier. Along the Shahloo wer small villages at intervals and between th land the junction of the Soochow Ori extended' paddy fields with a few villages, 'The general level of the soil was below high-water of spring tides, and the Land was kept from. been' overflooded by a towing-path slightly over the tide level. The new-comers soon set thew Selves to run up houses on the site, but their ideas were borrowed from the South.
There the old factories at Canton and the houses about Macao, were the best specimen-of architectural talent available; workmen were imported and a few houses, all of which have seemingly disappeared, were run up rather than built. The main requirement of a house in China was then supposed to be a wide verandah with round brick pillars running round, or at least three sides, and this was the type generally adopted. In some cases
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.