Empire Day finds the foreign community sweltering and limp in Wenchow's speciality—muggy weather. Thunder and lightning, which have been the concomitants of the season for some days, have given us heavy and sometimes protracted thunder-showers, affording but temporary alleviation. A temperature of only 80 in the shade, in perpetual vapour, feels at the time no less uncomfortable than the highest register of the days, and atmospheric pressure in these conditions appears to be twice its normal amount, and some would perhaps put it at, a higher figure. At any rate it seems 80 even one's spirits fee] the impact of the physical. They are to be envied, the mercury of whose disposition is beyond the reach of those forces and laws which affect the mercury in the barometer.
As a rule there is a plethora of fires in the after part of the year, but recent weeks have witnessed four or five fires. Happily the premises affected—shops and houses—were few, one fire a week ago doing damage to four fish shops at the North Gate facing the Customs and Post Offices, only the width of the road being between, the harbour master, who lives on the island, was called over to the mainland, and he
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.