Reading through the foregoing jottings, it occurs to me that, to anyone who has not lived in China, it may appear strange that you can go nowhere or do anything without a boat.

To a very great extent this is true. Round Shanghai foreigners have, with much difficulty, obtained from the Chinese authorities permission to make a very few miles of roads outside the boundary of the foreign concession. Five miles east, and five miles west is the limit. You must go and return by the same road. Day after day the same weary drive is all the carriage exercise to be had, which in a very short time becomes monotonous in the extreme.

Two or three years ago the municipal council endeavoured to buy from some of the natives a narrow strip of their land, at an absurdly high value, so as to make a new road, and vary a little the sameness of the present drive. But the Taotai stepped in and, under threats of some most awful punishment if his orders were disregarded, prohibited the Chinese from selling their land to foreigners for making new roads. His argument was that we had roads enough, and even more than we ought to have; that, whatever price we offered, the Chinese soil should not be further invaded; and that, so long as he could prevent it, we should not get any more ground.