(By arcureatp uirrte.)
Never since the first line was built seventy yearsago have railway undertakings presented so many difficulties and been the cause of so much anxiety to those engaged in them as in the Flowery Land. To the ordinary physical and financial difficulties have to be added the diplomatic, and these: latter, if we go on beating about the bush, will grow greater every diy, and zrow so exasperating that finally to solve them it may need a war, costing more than sufficient to endow the whole continent of China with a complete network of railways.
The first railway built in China was a narrow-gauge line twelve miles in extent, {connecting Shanghai with Woosung. This latter place is situated at the mouth of the affluent on whose banks Shanghai is built, xnd which here joins the Yangtze. Woosung is the Gravesend of Shanghai, where vessels too deep to cross the bar discharge their cargoes. Already in the fifties the question of railways had agitated the minds of British residents in China, but it was not until twenty years later that the firm of Jardine, Matheson and Ca., formed in Shanghai a local company to bly up_the strip of agricultural laud required, and built this short experimental line. The Chinese officials protested, as they protest against every innovation that they will neither introduce themselves nor allow others to introduce, and the short-sighted (as ever in foreign -") British Government of the day admitted the protest the line was pulled up and destroyed, much to the grief of the ' foreign" and native populations, who had thoroughly appreciated the line during the few short months of its existence.
This experimental line had, however, the result of opening the eyes of the Chinese officials tothe value of railways, and it was not long afterwards that they authorised the construction of a short line to be built exclusively with Chinese capital, between the Kaiping coal mines and Tientsin. The authorisation was originally for a coal tram way to be worked by horses, but it ultimately developed into a steam and passenger line, and formed the precursor of the eighty-mile line opened this year between Tientsin and Poking, also built with Chinese capital, but engineered by Mr. Kinder, the faithful servant of the Chinese for seventeen years, whom the Russians recently tried to displace. This
Chinese know the value of Mr. Kinder's intrigue fortunately came to naught; the service, and are not quite destitute of gratitude.
The concessionaire of this original Kai-Kiaino Chinese and whilom" Batish ing coal mine, Mr. Tong King-sing,
subject, subsequently, and shortly before his death, which occurred some ten years back, obtained a concession for a through line from Hankow to Peking, now celebrated under the name of the Lu-Han Railway. This trank line is about 900 miles long, and is ultimately to be carried through to Canton, " farther 800 miles. The terms were so onerous ana the prospects of profits so slender that no ''foreign" capitalist would look at it, until the Belgian syndicate in China signed the contract; but they spent a year afterwards vainly trying to place their four-and-a-half per cent. bonds in Europe. Now the Belgians have obtained the support of the Russo-Chinese Bank, and the work is to be pushed on seriously. Up to the spring of this year (when I was in Hankow) the eleven years elapsed since the line was first authorised had only resulted in some eleven miles of mud embankment through the Hupeh Lain. Ishall be agreeably surprised if I five to see this railway completed and working. We cry out' because this line invades our sphere, but seeing that the line was planned' years before our sphere of influence was thought of, it is late in the day to protest now. But this is no reason why we should not uphold the integrity of our sphere in all future railways, as the Germans do in Shantung. Germany has closed the once ' open door" with her mailed fist, and no choice is left us but either to kick it open again, or to fall back on our sphere of influence, How Germany upholds her sphere in, Shantung, a province as large and probably as rich in natural resources as England, is shown by her treatment of the next railway concession granted by the Chinese Foreign Office. This is a road from Peking to Chinkiang, a distance of about 800 miles. Eh ig is the firet treaty port" which we come to in ascending the Yangtze from Shanghai, and is situated 150 miles to the north-west of the great emporium, The
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.