]
In Shanghai there are schools of all grades, some under the foreign
municipal government, others under missionary societies. St. John's
College (U. S.
[Page 28]
Episcopal) and the Anglo-Chinese College (American M. E.) bear the
palm in the line of education so long borne by the Roman Catholics
of Siccawei. Added to these, newspapers foreign and native--the
latter exercising a freedom of opinion impossible beyond the limits
of this city of refuge--the Society for the Diffusion of Christian
Knowledge and other translation bureaux, foreign and native, turning
out books by the thousand with the aid of steam presses, form a
combination of forces to which China is no longer insensible.
Resuming our imaginary voyage we proceed northward, and in the
space of an hour find ourselves at the mouth of the Yang-tse Kiang,
or Ta Kiang, the "Great River," as the Chinese call it. The width
of its embouchure suggests an Asiatic rival of the Amazon and La
Plata. We now see why this part of the ocean is sometimes described
as the Yellow Sea. A river whose volume, it is said, equals that of
two hundred and forty-four such rivulets as Father Thames, pours
into it its muddy waters, making new islands and advancing the
shore far into the domain of Neptune.
Notice on the left those long rows of trees that appear to spring
from the bosom of the river. They are the life-belt of the Island
of Tsungming which six centuries ago rose like the fabled Delos
from the surface of the turbid waters.
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