12jJ . THE SEA. 



and every means was taken to inform the native population of the real casus belli, and 

 to advise them to remove from the scene of danger. Consul Parkes and Captain Hall 

 were engaged among other colporteurs in the rather dangerous labour of distributing tracts 

 and bills. In one of their rapid descents, Captain Hall caught a mandarin in his chair, 

 not far from the city gate, and pasted him up in it with bills, then starting off the 

 bearers to carry this new advertising van into the city ! The Chinese crowd, always alive 

 to a practical joke, roared with laughter. When the truce expired, more than 400 guns and 

 mortars opened fire upon the city, great pains being taken only to injure the city walls, official 

 Chinese residences, and hill forts. Then a force of 3,000 men was landed, and the city 

 was between two fires. The hill-forts were soon taken, and an expedition planned 

 and executed, chiefly to capture the native officials of high rank. Mr. Consul Parkes, 

 with a party, burst into a yamnn } an official residence, and in a few seconds Commissioner 

 Yeh was in the hands of the English. An ambitious aide-de-camp of Yen's staff protested 

 strongly that the captive was the wrong man, loudly stammering out, " Me Yeh ! Me Yeh ! " 

 But this attempted deceit was of no avail ; the prize was safely bagged, and shortly 

 afterwards the terms of peace were arranged. The -loss of life in the assault was not 

 over 140 British and 30 French. 



Shanghai is a port which has grown up almost entirely since 1844, the date of its 

 first occupation by foreigners for purposes of commerce. Then there were only forty-four 

 foreign merchant ships, twenty-three foreign residents and families, one consular flag, and 

 two Protestant missionaries. Twelve years later, there were, for six months' returns, 249 

 British ships, fifty-seven American, eleven Hamburg, eleven Dutch, nine Swedish, seven 

 Danish, six Spanish, and seven Portuguese, besides those of other nationalities. The 

 returns for the whole year embraced 434 ships of all countries; tea exports, 76,711,659 

 pounds ; silk, 55,537 bales. 



Shanghai (" the Upper Sea ") has been written variously Canhay, Changhay, Xanghay, 

 Zonghae, Shanhae, Shanghay, and so forth. Its proper pronunciation is as if the final 

 syllable were " high," not " hay." 



" Sailing towards the north of China,'' says Milne, " keeping perhaps fifty or sixty 

 miles off the coast, as the ship enters the thirtieth parallel, a stranger is startled some 

 iine morning by coming on what looks like a shoal perhaps a sand-bank, a reef he 

 knows not what. It is an expanse of coloured water, stretching out as far as the eye 

 can reach, east, north, and west, and entirely distinct from the deep-blue sea which 

 hitherto the vessel had been ploughing. Of course, he finds that it is the ' Yellow Sea;' 

 a sea so yellow, turbid, and thick, certainly, that you might think all the pease-soup iu 

 creation, and a great deal more, had been emptied into one monster cistern." The name 

 is therefore appropriate, as are the designations of several others : 



" The Yellow Sea, the Sea that's Red, 

 The White, the Black, the one that's Dead." 



Between the thirtieth degree of north latitude, where the group of the Choosan 

 Islands commences, and the thirty-seventh degree, this sea of soup, this reservoir of 

 tawny liquid, ranges, fed by three great rivers, the Tseen-Tang, the Yangtsze-Kiang, and 

 the Hwang-Ho, the greatest of which is the second, and which contributes the larger part 



