Muy tt anyone ever written a history of geographical names along the China coast? We do not mean the Chinese "names. which have their own poetical meanings. But the baptisms by unknown foreigners of peak ami promontory, island and isthmus, all the ae seas in fac Who were the godfathers? Wi were the circumstances which guided their choice of a name? Sometimes, 0} course, there is an obvious corruption of a Chinese name. For instance, Mount Gos: at Weihaiwei, properly -Gaoshan: from which its fellow, Lord Lansdowne, follows naturally enough. Plover Cove and Starling Inlet suggest obvious derivations; and every schoolboy knows, as 'Macaulay puts it, who was the original Gutzlaff.' But'when we get among the islands, a whole range of fascinating speculation opens up, The Pescadores, in bald translation, mean, no doubt, Fisherman's islands. But the word suggests far more than that. One has visions of pirates, not the sordid type that infest Bias Bay—whence came that name, too?—but the picturesque ruffians of the past, Flint, England, Morgan, and Long John Silver. Dodd Island, not so far away, must also have been haunt of theirs. the name might have come from RL. Stevenson's pen. But their treasure caves would be at the Pescadores:
Wedzes of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, Tnestimable stones, unvalued Jewels, All seatter'd in the bottom of the sea.
Then again the Lamocks. brought that name to the Far One hesitates to decide peaks more of Western Scotland or Cornwall. But its significance, like that of Breaker Point. a little southwards of the Lamocks on the mainland, cannot be missed. One sees the false lights go Up. ship crashing on the rocks and wreckers tumbling down the cliff side after their prey. dle Dog Island must" surely have been born of some fo'e'sl leat, but when and how? An Turnabout Island close to Foo chow may be due to its indicating the once most northern point of the tea-clipper's journey. But one would like evidence on the matter, Looking for one thing one finds another, This article really began as a review of one of wonderful publica atlas showing the Distribution ea Plies en Chine yar Mais, Saixons, Année, compiled and cly by Fathe:
And for those who want "all about China's rainfall, this ix the last word, Generally speaking south Chi gets most rain and north Chin Toast; hence, no doubt, the Gobr Desert and Peking's infamous dust storms. But there are wide variations by place and month In Hongkong it rains every other day at least in June and the total precipitation for the month is 280 millimetre. But. in October the highest figure recorded anywhere on the map ix only sixty. During the thre> winter months, Shanghai is expected to get 120 mil or not quite five inches. One would have thought that it was more, But doubtless the illusion ix clu to the invariable habit of confining itself to
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.