376 GEOGRAPHIC MISCELLANEA 



rangement had been arrived at between the University of Oxford and 

 the Royal Geographical Society for the creation of a School of Geography 

 at Oxford. The Society agrees to pay $2,000 a year and the University 

 promises a like sum. The school will be under the superintendence of 

 Mr Mackinder, subject to the supervision of a joint committee consisting, 

 in addition to the Vice-Chancellor, of four members of the University 

 and three members of the Council of the Society. Mr Mackinder, as 

 University Reader, will lecture twice a week during the three terms, and 

 will also have special classes for advanced students. There will be an 

 assistant who will lecture on physical geography, will hold classes five 

 times a week, and will teach surveying and cartography ; and there will 

 be two lecturers, one on certain branches of physical geography and one 

 on ancient geography. It is intended that a diploma shall be granted to 

 students who complete the course, and there will be one or two scholar- 

 ships of $300. These will be inducements to graduates to spend a year 

 in mastering the principles of geography and the knowledge requhed for 

 teaching the science and for making it practically useful. The upper 

 floor of the old Ashmolean building at Oxford has been set apart for the 

 purposes of the school, and an annual sum will be devoted to the supply 

 of books and appliances. 



Miss E. R. Scidmore, the Foreign Secretary of the National Geographic 

 Society, who has recently returned to America from extended travels in 

 China, Japan, and the Philippine islands, in an article in the August 

 Century, entitled " The River of Tea," presents some forcible facts regard- 

 ing the rapid development of Russian power in China: "At Hankow, 

 the great tea market of the world and until within a few years the chief 

 source of supply of British tea-drinkers, the Russian has come, and to 

 stay, and the shadow of the Muscovite is over it all. The Russian is not 

 only established at the gates of China, but also at its very heart, the in- 

 vasion and absorption being as remarkable in this British settlement at 

 Hankow as anywhere in Korea or Manchuria. Hankow is fast becom- 

 ing a Russian city or outpost, a foothold soon to be a stronghold in the 

 valley of the Yangtsze, which China has given her word shall never be 

 alienated to any power but England. Although the Russians have their 

 own concession at Hankow, they do not care to build upon it and live 

 there, amenable then to Russian laws and consular jurisdiction, to Rus- 

 sian i*estrictions and espionage. The Russians prefer the laws and the 

 order of the British concession, crowding in upon it at every opportunity, 

 competing for any house that comes into the market, and building closely 

 over former lawns and garden spaces. They compete with and outbid 

 the few British tea merchants who remain in these days of active Rus- 

 sian trade aggression. Only one tea steamer took a cargo to London in 

 1896, two more British firms closed out and left Hankow that year, and, 

 still more significant, only one pony showed the colors of the one British 

 racing stable at the autumn races. In the retail shops prices are quoted 

 and bills made out as often in rubles as in taels or dollars, and the Rus- 

 sians have gradually assumed an air of ownership, of seignorial rights, as 

 complete as if they held the lease or diplomatic deeds to the place for 

 ninety-nine years." 



