20th June.
Outport residents and exiles in the interior who come up to Shanghai to attend a conference, or see a dentist, or just for a holiday, are sometimes moved to express: surprise at the size and splendour of Shanghai, the excellence of its roads, the beauty of its suburbs, and the numerous evidences eve-where of its activity and prosperity. Tientsioners, however maintain their composure when they come here. To them, Shanghai is only another Tientsin, a little larger perhaps, but with hardly any other superiority over the great northern port. In fact, in one very important matter Tientsin is a long way ahead us. For forty years we have been talking of the absolute n-ces sity of doing something to preserve" our riveres a waterway for ocean steamers, Tientsin was id a similar case; the Peiho silted up so much that steamers had to stop at the mouth of the river, and it was confidently stated that there would be no more steamers at the tientsin Bund. But while we wear on talking, as we are still doing, Tientsin acted. They dredged and straightened their river, and shut off the canals which were draining off the water, and once more steamers much larger than those employed when the Peiho was navigable in the past, come up to the bund to discharge their inward and take in their out ward cargoes; and so successful has the Peiho Couservansy been, that it now contemplated to attack that terror to shipowners, shippers, and passengers, the Taku Bar. Fortunately for Tientsin, the conservancy of the Peiho was not made a clause in a protocol signed by the represeatatives of a dozen Powers. good conceit of itself, is shown by a That Tientsin has, and justly, a
letter which has just reached us from an old resident there, who has himself been one of the leading spirits in the good work to which the members of that community of all nationalities have so strenuously contributed. He says: "There can be no doubt that Tientsin la improving much in appearance. New and handsome houses adorn the streets. Good roads rue through the Concessious, and trees have been planted along them. Our Public Garden looks luxuriously een, and is crowded on evenings when the brilliant' German Bind plays"—a military band, not by any means the sort of German band that blows and blares in quiet West End streets in London, and sets studious
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.