Page:"Round the world." - Letters from Japan, China, India, and Egypt (IA roundworldletter00fogg 0).pdf/142



, January 1871.

Although Americans are far behind the British in commercial importance on the Chinese coast, in the matter of river steamers, we have the monopoly, The swift, side-wheel, American built steamboats have driven the slower, black, English boats out of the market. The navigation of the great Yangtse river for 600 miles from Shanghai to Haa-kow is in the hands of Americans. The five large steamers that ply on the Yangtse, some of them 1,500tons burden, look precisely like those on the Sound or Hudson river. This great artery of the Chinese Empire, the Yangtse, is sometimes by our English cousins in derision, called the “Yankee,” from the many American steamers on its waters.

From Hong Kong to Canton there is another line of American-built boats which control the immense passenger traffic between these two places. The distance is over one hundred mites, and boats leave daily at an early hour in the morning, reaching their destination in about seven hours. I stepped on board the “Fire King,” was introduced to the Captain, an American, Albert, an ex-rebel officer from Georgia, but now tolerably well reconstructed, and could almost imagine I was in America and about to take a trip up the Hudson. One peculiarity of all these river boats is that the first-class cabins are forward, which makes them much pleasanter in a warm cli-