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 the stream. A number of the crew had been projected by the shock some distance into the water; others clung to their property until it was submerged; but fortunately none of them perished, as a number of boats had seen the incident and had put off to their assistance at once.

Shanghai has always been able to hold its own as the great Chinese emporium of foreign trade. It was therefore with feelings of profound interest that I for the first time beheld the splen- did foreign settlement that stands there on the banks of the Wong-poo, at a spot which about sixty years ago was a mere swamp dotted with a few fisher huts, and inhabited by a miser- able semi-aquatic sort of Chinese population. In 1831 Dr. Gutzlaff, who visited the place for the first time in a junk, describes it as the centre of a great native trade, and tells us that from this port, "more than a thousand small vessels go up to the north several times annually, exporting silk and other Kiangnan manufactures," and besides, that an extensive traffic was carried on by Fukien men with the Indian Archipelago. But we may venture much further back in the history of the town. Several centuries ago, even before the Wong-poo river became a navigable stream at all, there was a great mart established in this locality on the banks of the present Soo-chow Creek, twenty-five miles distant from the harbour in which we have just anchored. * The topographical history of the district is full of records telling of the physical changes to which the vast alluvial plain where Shanghai stands has from time to time been subjected. Streams have been silted up, new channels have spontaneously opened; and yet, amid constant difficulties and never-ceasing alterations, the ever-important trade of the place has been maintained within


 * See the Shanghai Hein Chi.