Page:Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China.djvu/381

Rh the names of the officers who fell while fighting with Gordon's "ever victorious army" against the Taeping rebels in the sixties. The gardens are a very favourite resort, more especially in the early evening and after dinner during the summer, when crowds repair to them to enjoy the cool breezes and listen to the excellent music discoursed by the town band. At such times foreigners of all sorts and conditions are to be seen, from the heads of leading European commercial houses and their families to Indians and Japanese of the lower orders, but the Chinese, no matter what may be their station in life, are rigorously excluded, notwithstanding the fact that their emperor is lord of the soil. As some sort of solatium for this treatment another garden a little further along the Soochow Creek has been set apart for their use.

The offices of most of the banks and some of the oldest mercantile houses are situated on the Bund. They follow a variety of architectural styles, but all alike present a substantial appearance. The earlier buildings never consist of more than three storeys and usually have fore-courts, while the more recent structures attain a greater height and abut upon the path—differences which are significant of the vast increase which has taken place in the value of land. Among the most noticeable business premises are those of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the Eastern Extension and Great Northern Telegraph Companies, the new Russo-Chinese Bank, the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank, the Palace Hotel, and the Yokohama Specie Bank. The hong of Messrs. Jardine, Matheson & Co. is interesting by reason of the fact that it is one of the very few that survive from the infant days of the Settlement. The premises, which date from 1851, have a long return frontage to Peking Road, and are now being reconstructed and enlarged.

Probably the most striking building on the Bund is the Club Concordia, a very ornate edifice in the German Renaissance style, the foundation stone of which was laid by Prince Adalbert of Prussia, on October 22, 1904. Another very conspicuous feature of the water