Inquiries were being made, Mr. Rigden said, to determine the' pos sibility of sending ships in to Canton and the feeling was that there was a Likelihood of the boom being opened within the next few days under certain provisions.
The Butterfield vessels now tied up at Canton.are frequently scon at Shanghai in trading up and down the China Coast. The boom which keeps them idle these: days is across the Pearl River just below the Bocca Tigris Forts. "The blockade was established on' October 1, Foreign war vessels trapped by the boom were the British river gunboats Tarantula and Robin, the French Argus and the USS. Mindanao,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.