TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION B. 663 



2. Industrial and Commercial Progress in China. Bij R. S. Gundry. 



Premising that the wide differences in character and habits of thought between 

 ourselves and the Chinese make it difRcult to convey to an English audience an 

 accurate impression of the situation, the paper goes on to sketch the leading 

 features of Chinese industry and commerce in so far as they concern, and have 

 been affected by, foreign enterprise. Beginning to move at a time when she had 

 been defeated in a foreign war, China's lirst efforts were to provide herself with 

 the warlike material which experience had shown her to be so powerful. 1 fence 

 the early construction of arsenals and steamers. The beginnings of telegraphy and 

 the acceptance in principle of railways were due also, in a measure, to warlike 

 stress in connection with Kulja and Tongking. And mining was recognised 

 largely as a means of providing for all this additional expenditure. But imper- 

 fection of knowledge, jealousy of foreign supervision, and a disorganised condition 

 of finance which involves venality and harassing taxation, retard a progressive 

 movement, to which the literati who constitute the mind of the nation are still as 

 a body disinclined. The imperial finances, too, liave been strained by a series of 

 wars, rebellions, and disasters ; and distrust of theii- officials prevents native capi- 

 talists from investing money in enterprises with which the officials persist in 

 raeddhng. The great staples of tea and silk are severely menaced by the compe- 

 tition of India and Ceylon in the one case, and of Southern Europe in the other ; 

 and the Chinese are slow to accept improved methods of preparation which would 

 enable them to hold their own. China tea is heavily handicapped also by taxation, 

 in competition with its duty-free rival. Fiscal hindrances, imperfect communica- 

 tions, and consequent cost of transport have much to do with the slow develop- 

 ment of trade. JJut the wide prevalence of domestic industry, and difficulties of 

 exchange caused by the demonetisation of silver, tend also to check the anticipated 

 growth of demand for our manufactures. There seems every prospect that more 

 railways will shortly be constructed, and that machinery will be tentatively 

 admitted for purposes of industrial manufacture. But much time, a more wide- 

 spread desire for progress, and radical financial reform will be required before 

 China is likely to rival Jajjan in the completeness of its transformation. 



3. The Central Asian Eailwaij in relation to the Commercial Rivalry of 

 England and Russia. By the Hon. G. CuRZON, ISI.P. 



4. Wind-action in Egypt} By W. M. Flinders Petkie. 



5. On Lake Tanganyika.'^ By Captain Edward Coode Hore. 



6. Portuguese E.vplorations in Austral Africa during the Nineteenth Century. 

 By J. Batalha-Reis, F.B.G.S. 



From the fifteenth century to the present time the Portuguese have not ceased 

 to explore those parts of Africa where they settled, causing the continent to be 

 traversed from the coast to the interior, and from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. 

 Outside Portugal the greater part of the Portuguese explorations of the nineteenth 

 century are entirely unknown. Many geographers and the public in general believe, 

 and repeat daily, that Portugal has done nothing in Africa since the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, and that even then her travellers explored only the African coast. As 

 ignorance regarding this chapter of geographical history is the origin of many and 

 great mistakes in modern questions which are linked up with politics and inter- 

 national right, and with which public opinion is so intensely preoccupied just now, 



'* See Proceediiiffs of the Royal Geographical Society, November, 1S89. 



^ Published in Proceedings of the Jioyal Geograjihical Society, October, 18S9. 



