with the tide in as many hours, tea-laden
and bound to Europe; but none of our company were prepared for what we
saw as we first rounded the point where a good view of Shanghai is
obtained, and saw, in the brilliant light of a harvest moon, the dense
forest of masts that filled the river. I have seen the mass of shipping
in the Pool at London, and in the Mersey at Liverpool, in the East river
at New York, and the Delaware at Philadephia, in Boston and San
Francisco harbors, and in all the other ports of China, and among them
all Shanghai holds no mean rank. The summer of 1863, from peculiar
circumstances, the dullness of freights elsewhere, and the depredations
of the Alabama and other piratical cruisers, called to the China coast,
and especially to Shanghai, as fine a fleet of clippers as was to be
found in any port of the world; and on that bright mid-summer night we
found them anchored in three parallel rows, crossing the channel of a
river half a mile wide, and stretching for a mile and a half, if not two
miles, up and down before Shanghai.

Interspersed among these ships of all nations whose flags are known on
the seas, were steamers of all sizes, from the little tugboat to the
large steamers, like the Poyang of fifteen hundred tons, plying on the
Yang-tze and between the ports on the China sea, the Yellow sea, and in
Japan. Of these, no less than seventy-one belong to or trade with
Shanghai, and at that time there could not have been less than forty in
port.

Beyond the vessels at anchor in the stream, the space to the very banks
of the river was filled up and covered by a cloud of Chinese junks,
sampans, and river boats of every class and name.

We were before one of the great cities of the world, or one that is yet
to be known as among its most flourishing. The moonlight was reflected
from a long row of stately buildings, palaces in extent and noble
proportions, which lined the bank of the river for more than a mile.
These were the residences and mercantile houses of the merchants, the
public buildings, and the 'foreign concessions' in general, as they are
called. Beyond them could be seen the dim, turreted outlines of the
Chinese city, now closed and hushed for the night, but seemingly of vast
extent. The first and overruling impression here, as in all European
settlements on the China coast, except Canton and Swatow, was the grand
scale on which everything was done. The residences or hongs of the
merchants