Amona the four-and-twenty open ports of China there avy many the situation of which derives little advantage from Proximity to great Chinese adequate space far expansion, unwholesome climate, these are some of the evils which seem inevitable in Chiva, If we must live in Chins, many Shameen or Kulangsu, where it is pos-orsons would prefer an island like sible to be at once near, and yet not too close to the native population. The situation of Tientsin has many peculiarities. It is on an open plain comparatively sparsely inhabited. It is not near any other port, and those which are least distant are not in any nay rivals, One of them—Chefoo—has no natural waterways connecting it with the interior, 'T'ientsin, on the contrary, is at the confluence of a system of rivers and canals which radiate from that metropolis like the ribs of an open fan. Of these there are eight or more, and they are the gate-ways to all North China, using that expression in its more modern sense. tientsin is in addition the port of the Capital. Even if the "Manchu 8! Court should pack up and remove to sianfu, as they came so near doing during the war, that would not cripple the development of tientsin, which depends upon the operation of causes more far-reaching than the security of any dynasty. When the Peiho is sucessfully tamed, and the mischief wrought by a too wide dispersion of its waters remedied, there will be more tangible evidence of the development than there now is, But even' if all the schemes which now promise ea well toward this end should fail, the result would only be to shift the centre of activity; not to divert, much less to stop it.
Foreigners who have lived in China for twenty years have been so often
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.