Curious Conditions which Face them when they Tackle their Under-Water Jobs: Surprises of the River Bottom To the chance passer-by on a Pleasure boat the sight of a diver descending to the river bottom is usually only ing interest swith perhaps a side comment on the angers involved but a moment's thought reveals that there is diving, and diving, and that carried on in Shanghai "is "so far out of the ordinary as to be replete more thrills than one cares to contemplate, Principally is this true for two very good reasons. First. because the Whangpoo water contains such a density of silt as to make the usual procedure of carrying on by the aid of an electri under-water Tight totally impossible; and second, because of the speed of the current and the temperament of the River God which is such that where there Was an especially swift churning yesterday, with which the divers have to be fully acquainted, the spot to-day may be as quiet as a mill pond, The Sense of Touch Considering, then, the first peculiarity of local ' under-water work, it will be seen that the labour must be carried on wholly by a sense of touch and feeling, which when one but gives a moment's though*, is marvellous in the extreme, or two Japanese in the local diving world, but the Chinese predominate and are considered in shipping cles to-have a special aptitude for the work.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.