Chinese riverine shipping is growing heavily. All flags are seen on the Yangtze, and several flags in the lower parts of the Kan and Siang Rivers. The British and Chinese, and some French flags go up the West and Yu Rivers to Nanning. Chinese shipping on the Liao River to Newchwang is heavy in the ice-free season. There are scores of other rivers which will be dredged so that they may feed the steamship and railroad lines. The Chinese have an amusing word for captain. “Lao ta” is literally “old fellow”; because the captain of the old Yangtze rapids boats was generally the oldest man on board. The captain of the Hakka sanpans of Canton is often a woman, but she is humorously called “lao ta” with the rest! China led in all inventions, including woman’s rights! In the coming great development of Western China, the one name to inscribe on the tablets is that of the pioneer merchant writer, Archibald Little, who, after twenty years of effort, broke the veil of the Yangtze gorges and took the first steamer to open up the ports of Ichang and Chungking in 1898. This brought him within beckoning distance of British Burma and Archibald Colquhoun’s propaganda, and split China in two with the wedge of commerce, despite the obstructive Tsung Li Yamen at Manchu Peking. Mr. Little’s three books on Western China are: _Through the Yangtze Gorges_, _To Omi Mount in Szechuen_, and _Across Yunnan_; and he wrote, moreover, a very important geological work which places him high as a prospector and explorer. VIII AMERICA IN CHINA Where the Happy Valley Road branches off, one part leading to the Royal Golf Club, and the other to the Mohammedan, Parsee and European cemeteries, and Wong Nei Chong valley, Hongkong, on a spot where Secretary William Henry Seward stood in 1869, there is a monument which has particular interest for Americans and Britons, and possibly it is a prophecy of their united work in the future in developing China. The monument tells its own story of brothers in arms in the dangers of the Far Eastern seas in lonely days as follows: _Erected by the officers and crews of the United States steam frigate Powhatan and H. B. M. steam sloop Rattler, in memory of their shipmates who fell in a combined attack on a fleet of piratical junks off Kuhlan (Kowloon) August 4, 1855. Killed in the action: Powhatan. John Pepper, seaman. James A. Halsey, landsman. Isaac Coe, landsman. S. Mullard, marine. B. F. Addamson, marine._