The old city was built over three centuries ago, and is encircled, as indeed are nearly all large Chinese cities and towns, by a wall twenty-four feet high and fifteen broad; it is nearly four miles in circumference. Shanghai was at one time greatly exposed to the depredations of freebooters and pirates, and partly in consequence of this the wall is plentifully provided with loop-holes, arrow-towers, and military observatories. The six great gates of the city of Shanghai have grandiloquent titles, _à la Chinoise_. The north gate is the “calm-sea gate;” the great east gate is that for “paying obeisance to the honourable ones;” the little east one is “the precious girdle gate;” the great south is the gate for “riding the dragon,” while another is termed “the pattern Phœnix.” Its oldest name is Hoo. In early days the following curious mode of catching fish was adopted. Rows of bamboo stakes, joined by cords, were driven into the mud of the stream, among which, at ebb tide, the fish became entangled, and were easily caught. This mode of fishing was called _hoo_, and as at one time Shanghai was famous for its fishing stakes, it gained the name of the “Hoo city.” The tides rise very rapidly in the river, and sometimes give rise to alarming inundations. Lady Wortley’s description of the waters of the Mississippi apply to the river-water of Shanghai; “it looks marvellously like an enormous running stream of apothecary’s stuff, a very strong decoction of mahogany-coloured bark, with a slight dash of port wine to deepen its hue; it is a mulatto-complexioned river, there is no doubt of that, and wears the deep-tanned livery of the burnished sun.” Within and without the walls, the city is cut up by ditches and moats, which, some years ago, instead of being sources of benefit and health to the inhabitants, as they were originally intended to be, were really open sewers, breathing out effluvia and pestilence. In some respects, however, Shanghai is now better ordered as regards municipal arrangements.