Yesterday the first steam tugs left this port for Tsingkiangpu and Yangchow. Three or four companies are going to put steamers on these interior water lines. They are to run from Chivkiang to Yangchow, to Tsing-kiangsu, to Nanking, and to Soochow. Whether they will receive patronage from the natives will depend more on the rates di than on the speed of transportation. For with the Chinese, notoriously, "time is not money," and they will patronise the cheapest lines regardless of the loss of time. If the steam-tug lines make their rate very much above that of the native boats, the latter will still doubtless hold their own. The enormous rates now charged on the river steamers do not forecast very reasonable rates on internal navigation.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.