So benighted are we at this jumping-off place, Shanghai, and so badly are we kept informed of what is passing even in the empire which we irritate by our presence, that until we read the San Francisco Chronicle. of the 10th of November last, and study its Railway map of China, we actually do not know the progress that the iron way has made in the country. We might be excused—considering the distances that separate us from Canton, Peking, and Newchwang, and the difficulties of communication with these out-of-the-way places—for not knowing that there are already railways completed between Canton and Fatshan (which it appears is on the coast of Kuangtung and nearly opposite Hongkong), Newchwang and Moukden. and Peking and Tientsin; but nothing can account for our ignorance of the fact that there are already completed lines of railway between Shanghai and Hangchow and Shanghai and Soochow. It can only be the ineradicable conservatism of the cloth that induces the missionaries and dignitaries of the churches who are constantly travelling between these points to continue to use native boats, with the aid at times of a helpful steam-launch, and entirely ignore the more comfortable and speedy train, Lest our readers should think that we are exaggerating the extent of the information given by the Chronicle on this momen-fous subject, we reproduce its own words. It has been giving a fairly accurate account of the genesis of the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.