Taran has superseded Chefoo as the holiday ground for residents of Shanghai and the river ports, partly because it offers far more attractions, and partly because its steam-service, since the competition between the French and the Japan mail steamers began, is both better and cheaper. These lines can employ much larger steamers than the northern lines can, which is a consideration to people who desire to inaugurate and close their annual! holiday with as little sea-sickness as possible. For Shanghai peuple at any rate Kobe is usually the landing-place, commanding, as it does, the ancient capital Kioto with its sights and its surrounding scenery. Not so many years ago Kobe was a well-built but dull little settlement, in which it was difficult for visitors to discover what business there was on which the residents lived. But in the last lustrum Kobe has made a wonderful start, and it is now looking forward to soon rivalling and ere long to surpassing Yokohama. From time to time of late we have mentioned isolated facts indicating the progress of Kobe; and this progress is depicted in facts and figures in the Report to the Foreign Office by Mr. Longford on the Trade of Hiogo and Osaka for the year 1888, Osaka, big provincial capital as it is, with a population of about 400,000, does little direct foreign trade, practically all its import and export business being done through Hiogo (Kobe). The direct import trade of Osaka in 1888, Mr. Longford tells us, was worth about £270,000, and the export £60,000. The import trade "consisted mainly of articles of Eastern production, such as drags, sugar, and unginned cotton, the only item of any consequence in it of European production being arms and munitions of war of a value of £30,000." Mr. Longford's report, therefore, applies really exclusively to Kobe. Here the figures are decidedly striking, and to shew the way that the port has made of late, we are given the total imports and exports for 1880 and 1888
Imports Exports Total £2,603,000 £7,297,248
"The total value of the foreign trade carried on at the two ports during the past year was, therefore, almost double the average value of that during the previous five years, 1883 to 1887, and nearly three times that during the year 1880, while it represented an increase amounting to about 48 per cent. on the value of the trade in the immediately preceding year." And Mr. Longford goes on to tell us that this trade while large was also profitable, both to foreigners and Japanese. The native population of Hiogo has increased considerably; the value of real property, both in the native town and the foreign settlement: has largely risen, and experienced foreign residents see good reason to believe that the largely increased trade of 1883 "is but an earnest of a greater and more valuable one in years to come."
After this "roseate" general view, Mr. Longford comes down to particulars, and we find an increase under every one of the chief heads of imports, and on nearly all the exports. The two following tables shew this at a glance:—
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.