Narrowness of tJie Streets in Shanghai. 417 



twenty-four feet in height, and the foreign-quarter, which 

 has been laid out beyond tlie walls since the year 1843, and 

 is as much distinguislied by elegance as by comfort. Old 

 Shanghai, only accessible by three of the six gates with 

 which it is furnished, contains 250,000 inhabitants in a 

 superficial area of nine Li, or about two and one-third Eng- 

 lish miles, and, including the pojDulation of neighbouring 

 towns, who are constantly flocking to and fro, about 400,000. 

 The streets are filthy and singularly narrow, so much so that 

 occasionally it is difficult for two men to pass each other, 

 the small cross streets vividly recalling Venice, or the 

 "lanes" of London. It is with difficulty, and only by a 

 constant succession of cries and hearty buffets, that the 

 bearers of merchandise can force their way through these 

 intricate passages, and find their way to their destination. 

 The houses, for the most part one and two storeys in height, 

 usually consist of shops on the ground-floor, each with a 

 flaming superscription in gigantic characters, which, the 

 better to arrest the curiosity of the passers-by, is generally 

 hung diagonally across the narrow street. The living throng, 

 which throughout tlie entire day surges to and fro here, is so 

 immense and so various that it leaves upon a stranger an im- 

 pression even deeper than that made by the crowds and 

 bustle of Piccadilly or Regent Street, on a fine day in the 

 height of " the season." The grotesqueness and filth of 

 almost everything that meets the eye rather adds to tlie 

 singularity of tlie spectacle, and while the \dsitor on the one 



VOL. II. 2 E 



