Note 27 — Chapter XXIII

"Owing to the violence of the winds, and the rapidity of the current in certain places, the application of steam to navigation was required before the Yangtsze could be made available as a highway for transport. The decks of the steamers are now crowded with Chinese passengers, and their holds are filled with produce destined, not for foreign export, but for Chinese consumption. The practical advantages of foreign inventions are thus brought home to masses of the population in the very centre of China, and they can now avail themselves of the natural outlet for the productions of those rich internal provinces, instead of being driven to the slow and circuitous method of artificial water communication, and exposed to the exactions of the officials of the different provinces they had to pass through."—Sir F. Bruce.