Jan. 18, We have already referred more than once to the work which rapidly turning this historic waterway into a broad thoroughfare, but it would be a grave omission were we to allow its original raison d'étre to be—forgotten in. the—delight already experienced by the suppression of those odoriferous qualities for which of late years it has been notorious rather than famous, The original suggestion of the Defence Creek belongs to a period when anything west of the Szechuen Rond was "tin the coun and whatever credit attaches to it belongs, not to any far-sight ed foreign official, not timid native resident of the Settle ment, but to a well-intentioned liberal minded, and deservedly much resected Manchu, to wit, H. E. Keih. of the early fifties, whose full style and. title was Keih-Ur-Hang-Ab. This was the official who, from being at one time Judge and Govirnor of Kiangsu, found himself during the later months—of 1853 in command of a Chinese force having ils hend-quarters at Sinza, and its camps stretching from the present race course ta the western side of the city. This was necessary for the purpose of retaking the city from the Triad rebels who then ocenpiedit. Keih's men were, by his own confession, "'stupid and foolish." They were guilty of various inroads into the Settlement, and of still more interferences with foreigners in their rambles. To stop the inroads. his Excellency one day in conversation with two young British officials, Messrs. Wade and Lay, suggested cutting road ditch'? to keep his men in bounds. Wade jumped at ea, none the be Ise less Keih proposed that he himself! should pay the cost. Unfortnnately nothing was done, and the Battle of Muddy Flat followed in Aue course.
Not till 1861, seven years after was the Defence Creek completed in the form in which it has since been known. Then its object was the keeping out of the Taiping. Prior to that time, however, there had always been a waterway known as the Chowking Creek which occupied the same line as the Defence Creek from its junction with the Yangking-pang northwards to a
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.