Such were some of my reflections when I found myself for the first time in the midst of the busy scenes on the quays of Shanghai, surrounded by countless bales of silk and cases of tea waiting for embarkation for the West from whence I came. Shanghai, as is well known, is the port of entry of that great water highway of Western China, the Yang-tse, but it is more than that, it is the commercial capital of the Celestial Empire, for, as stated by Colquhoun in his _China in Transformation_, fifty-five per cent, of the total value of the foreign imports at all the treaty ports, and forty-eight per cent, of the exports to foreign countries pass through the port of Shanghai. "Four years ago the value of the trade, native and foreign, of this great emporium of the East was estimated at no less than £35,772,006, and it has increased rather than decreased since then. Several steamers have plied daily since 1860 between Shanghai and Hankow, and some three thousand vessels, one-half of which are British, enter the port every year. Silk and tea are the chief exports, after which come cotton, rice, sugar, paper, tobacco, various drugs used as medicines, cloth of native manufacture, wool, hemp, flower-seeds, fans, and other fancy articles." The chief imports from abroad are cotton goods, alcohol, opium, which is fortunately rapidly declining in amount, various metals, and woollen stuffs. In 1896, France, whose trade with China takes third rank amongst that of European nations, England coming first and then Germany, exported goods to the value of one hundred and eighty-four millions of francs, on which she paid one million five hundred thousand francs duty. To set against this, French imports to China, including woven materials, lace, wine, copper, and other goods, amounted to the value of twenty-eight millions only; that is to say, one hundred and fifty-six millions less than the exports. What an immense difference does this sum represent between what China gave and what she received, and what a price the Chinese paid for the privilege of dealing with the West! To this day the Celestials, whose ports have been opened against their will by the cannon of the British, aided by those of the French, give what they must give to foreigners grudgingly; to use an expressive saying, there is no love lost between them and those they trade with. They would like to take all and give nothing in return. Those who are unfortunate enough to die abroad will not allow their dust to aid in fructifying the soil of the land of their exile, for their bodies are brought by steamers from San Francisco, Peru, the Philippine Islands, Australia, and elsewhere, to be buried in their native land, in the same last resting-place as that of their ancestors, where their memory will be held sacred by their own descendants. There is indeed something very pathetic and touching in the intense devotion of the Chinese to their native land, in spite of their ignorant readiness to leave it.