“ The importance of Tientsin has been enhanced by the railways connecting it with Peking on the one hand and with Shanhai-kwan and Manchuria on the other. The British concession, in which the trade centres, is situated on the right bank of the river Peiho below the native city, and occupies some 200 acres. It is held on a lease in perpetuity granted by the Chinese government to the British Crown, which sublets plots to private owners in the same way as is done at Hankow. The local management is entrusted to a municipal council organized on lines similar to those which obtain at Shanghai. ”

“ The city has always been a great commercial depot; a wharf nearly two miles long affords ample facilities for vessels able to cross the bar of the Peiho, over which there is a depth of water varying from 9 to 12 ft. ”

“ On the establishment of Roman Catholic orphanages some years later the pretensions of the priests so irritated the people that on the occurrence of an epidemic in the schools in the year 1870 they attacked the French and Russian establishments and murdered twenty-one of the foreign inmates, besides numbers of their native followers. ”