seemed planned by liberal minds, and executed by as liberal
hands. Space and money are not spared, and to obtain coolness and
comfort in so hot a climate, the ceilings of rooms are made very high,
few of the houses having more than two stories. Generally the material
is the small, over-baked and dark-colored brick of the Chinese, overlaid
with stucco; but occasionally a house is seen built of stone, one or two
of the largest and most valuable being entirely of granite. Generally
these hongs stand in spacious enclosures, or _compounds_, filled with
rare tropical trees and the bamboo so common in China.

The finest residences are on the river bank or Bund, as it is commonly
called; but the city stretches for several squares back from the river,
being densest in the English Concession. The American quarter, Hong-Que,
although not as well filled with fine houses, is the next in importance,
while the French Concession, nearest to the great city within the walls,
is meanly built, and has more of the native element than either of the
others. For, although it is contrary to Chinese law for any native to
hold property in any of the foreign possessions, in practice large
numbers of Chinamen rent tenements from their foreign owners, and even
own them, the property standing, for convenience' sake, in the name of
some foreign resident in trust. Thus there has gradually grown up around
and upon the concessions a large Chinese city, believed by many to
contain almost as large a population as the city within the walls. This
is not incredible when we consider that the excesses of the Tae-Pings in
Soo-Chow, a large city about thirty miles from Shanghai, have driven
vast numbers of its inhabitants to the latter place, which, being
already densely crowded, has overflowed its walls, and, as the presence
of Europeans has made Shanghai, as it were, a city of refuge for the
exiles, they have naturally crowded around the foreign settlement. In
this manner the population of Shanghai and its environs has been
prodigiously augmented within the last two years, and from a place of
six hundred thousand inhabitants, it has become one of more than a
million of people. It is extremely difficult to obtain even an
approximate estimate of the population of a Chinese city. The estimates
of the Chinese are totally unreliable, varying sometimes in the most
ridiculous manner, and generally being preposterously exaggerated, while
the estimates of strangers or fo