Page:Through China with a camera.pdf/278

CHAPTER IX.

SHANGHAI. NINGPO. HANKOW. THE YANGTSZE.

opening of the Suez Canal wrought as great a change in the China trade as in the commerce of the Malayan Archipelago; and nowhere is this change more marked than in the carrying traffic from port to port along the coasts of China. Old lumbering junks, lorchas and even square-rigged sailing ships have given place to the splendidly equipped steamers of the local companies that ply regularly between the different stations from Hongkong to Newchang ; and then innumerable vessels, owned, not a few of them, by private firms, as well as by native and European companies, frequently find lucrative employment when the tea and silk seasons have not yet begun, either in running between the treaty ports, or in making short voyages to the rice-markets of Indo-China.

It was my good fortune to make a coasting trip to Shanghai