until steamers succeeded in reaching it. As, however, under Article 47 of the Treaty of Tientsin, ships resorting to "ports of trade other than those declared open by this treaty" were with their cargo liable to confiscation, it gradually dawned upon the minds of those concerned that a Chinese puzzle had been propounded about as susceptible of solution as the problem as to which came first, the chicken or the egg?
The British merchant, however, has no time to waste in guessing at Chinese diplomatic conundrums which have no answers, and in 1899 Mr Little built an experimental steamer, the Kuling, with which he proposed ascending the Yang-tsze, and so claiming the opening of the port to trade. Such Alexandrian methods of cutting their Gordian knot were not at all to the liking of the Mandarinate, and a diplomatic wrangle immediately ensued, the Chinese surpassing themselves in fertility of argument when they declared, in an official despatch to Sir John Walsham, that "the monkeys in the Gorges would throw down rocks on the passing steamers, and that then the poor Chinese
