er-bottomed steamer for the higher journey had come in. The city
is made up of foreign concessions, as in other treaty ports, but away in
the native quarter there is the real China, with her selfish rush, her
squalidness and filth among the teeming thousands. There dwell together,
literally side by side, but yet eternally apart, all the conflicting
elements of the East and West which go to make up a city in the Far
East, and particularly the China coast.

Hankow means literally Han Mouth, being situated at the juncture of the
Han River and the Yangtze. Across the way, as I write, I can see
Han-yang, with its iron works belching out black curls of smoke, where
the arsenal turns out one hundred Mauser rifles daily. (This is but a
fraction of the total work done.) It is, I believe, the only
steel-rolling mill in China. Long before the foreigner set foot so far
up the Yangtze, Hankow was a city of great importance--the Chinese used
to call it the centre of the world. Ten years ago I should have been
thirty days' hard travel from Peking; at the present moment I might
pack my bag and be in Peking within thirty-six hours. Hankow, with
Tientsin and Nanking, makes up the trio of principal strategic points of
the Empire, the trio of centers also of greatest military activity. On
the opposite bank of the river I can see Wu-ch'ang, the provincial
capital, the seat of the Viceroyalty of two of the most turbulent and
important provinces of the whole eighteen.

Hankow, Han-yang, and Wu-ch'ang have a population of something like two
million people, and it is safe to prophesy that no other centre in the
whole world has a greater commercial and industrial future than Hankow.

Here we registered as British subjects, and secured our Chinese
passports, resembling naval ensigns more than anything else, for the
four provinces of Hu-peh, Kwei-chow, Szech'wan, and Yuen-nan. The
Consul-General and his assistants helped us in many ways, disillusioning
us of the many distorted reports which have got into print regarding the
indifference shown to British travelers by their own consuls at these
ports. We found the brethren at the Hankow Club a happy band, with every
luxury around them for which hand and heart could wish; so that it were
perhaps ludicrous to look upon them as exiles, men out in the outposts
of Britain beyond the seas, building up the trade of the Empire. Yet
such they undoubtedly were, most of them having a much better time than
th