spring time Shanghai's rainfall rises to 200 millimetre, but i point so near as Soochow gets half as much again, Nothing is more curious than rain's partiality. One has seen a share line drawn across the wood pavement of Nanking Road, one id the other per-her Gherzi's map In North China th lines indicating rainfall ing November. from fort millimetre at Antung to twenty at Mukden, run in almost par-alld lines, On the whole the records indicate less rain than personal experience, or it may. be imagination, suggests. For aen it rains in China it docs rain. People in England complain of wet summers. Yet it is comparatively seldom that the rain stops one from doing w tone wants to do. No one who has not lived in Asia can have any conception of what rain can or, for that matter, of the awful heat of the sun.
It was in studying the di grams of Father Gherzi's map that one's eye wandered to the romantic names of so many of its incidents. How much do these islanders know of republican China? What interest do they take in the race of Feng and Yen for Peking? What do they reck of the New Demism? Little enough one may imagine and, like Horatio, their estate is the' more blessed.
The world forgetting by the world forgot—they live out" peaceful 1 for there is nothing about them to attract either professional or political pirates. Which suggests another geographical idea. The best known name to Shanghai ears is, perhaps, that of the Saddles, They belonged to the late Mr. Henry Morris, who offered them more than once to the Shanghai Municipal Council with the idea that they might become a popular place for short holidays. But the Council said nay, and the project of develop: ing the islands languished, Why should not the offer be accepted even now and all our criminals be transported from the Munieipal Gaol to the Saddles? 'They could not escape. and thus vers: few guards would be required. The "climate la healthy, no demands for expensive hospitals need wrinkle our councillors' azure, brows. And the men might' fish. furrow, and farm chickens to keep down the costs of living. It seems an ideal scheme. As a health resort the Saddles have failed. Let them ko up a step and become a ation for our pampered con-vets,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.