When one realizes that-it was notantil the year 1881 - that China showed any interest whatever in the telegraph; it must -be admitted that the pre-ut. tolerable certainty with which one may send a telegram to any official city in the Eighteen Provinces of the Outer Territories is remarkable. It. was mainly through the influence of the"Great Northern Telegraph Company that China started inland telegraphs. One of the most. interesting writers things: Chinese, the late Mr. Alexander Michie, fifteen years before: the first line was laid, accurately predicted that "the electric telegraph would accompany. railways, if, indeed, it does not precede them." The Chinese had always shown a keen! Appreciation of the rapid. tray mission of intelligence, from six to seven thousand different characters, which under normal conditions is sufficient. courier and transmitted thence ito their destination vid Shanghai. In 1887 China asked. perjmission* to connect. her lines. with those of'Siberia, but permission was not granted for this until 1892 when a contemporary report states that the Chinese Sources of the country, and the result of all these measures has been that a close approach to parity has been. achieved between the pound sterling and gold dollar, the rate remaining the neighbourhood of 4.86.
Two years later, when the first, telegraph system already com-|h; Considering how low sterling las sunk at various times in the /public road was constructed from, Shanghai to Woosung, the Great Northern Telegraph Company, bore part of the expense on the. condition that a telegraph line, should be constructed along the road. This was the first, complete telegraph service allowed to be built in China. The prised 14,000 miles of line, with 20,000 miles of wire, stations in 17 different' cities, and connexion with Formosa, the Pescadores and Hainan. The system also covered the import-lant points from Heilunkiang to from Korea to the Kinshakiang, and from Kiakhta it Taotai, however, raised a serious|*®,, Kuang. Hotel del objection to this innovation, but O™Y fa Peking wisely overruled him, very commencement of telegraph land the line was retained. Li enterprise in China a spirit of, Hung-chang, ever alive. progress: has animated those foreign inventions, connected responsible for its direction. this _yamén with the arsenal in In the early days—indeed, until 1877, and the Tientsin Taotai quite recent rear \followed suit in 1879 by connect-Northern Telegraph Company ting his yamen with the Takul™' the inspiring factor, and (Forts. It was in that year that representatives of that company trouble with Russia over the have gone out fa1 ito the wilds Kuldja district came about, of Kansu, Yunnan and Tibet to which led Li Hung-chang to sec undertake initial work in com-the necessity of I adopting the jeting the service.
Now it is telegraph for empire-wide com-; Munication, and as @ result, in 1880 an arrangement was arrived lat between Viceroy Li and the \Great Northern Telegraph Com, pany to survey, and later on to)
per intend, the construction a land line between Shanghai and Tientsin. Work upon this) line, of about a thousand miles, was itted on November 29, 41881, and it we officially December 24, fairly complete and it only remains to revise the tariff and if possible to prevent the Tuchuns.
moments of crisis from monopolizing the wires for the fighting of their battles,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.