There are a great number of native oil factories in this country now. The method of expressing the oil is of the most primitive kind, but as oil is universally used here both for illuminating and culinary purposes it must pay to manufacture it, An enormous quantity of the oil also is shipped to the south every year. Any place which increases the production and at the same time saves time I should think would certainly pay. It is a constant wonder to mo that foreign mer chants do not send agents through the country to see what is needed and what would pay in the way of introducing machinery. A man who understands the language and the people would be invaluable to his employers if they could keep him on the go for months at a time travelling through the country, rather than wearing out a chair in his office in some open port.
Business seems good hero now; the streets are crowded and people seem more or less prosperous, yet strange to say several good banks have had to close their doors in the past 3 months. The banking business seems to be getting more and more into the hands of a few strong houses. The ordinary money shops of which there are a great number (an average of one or two for every 150 yards or so along the business streets) seem to always combine the wholesale opium business along with the exchanging and lending of money.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.