several years, rendered it extremely unlikely that the Executive, without aid from some unusual source, could increase or maintain an increased expenditure.'
However, towards the close of the year 1869, a gradual improvement, which had set in for some time, became visible. That the shipping trade of the Colony greatly increased in 1869, is clear from the excess, over 1868, of 45 British ships, measuring 41,615 tons and of 135 foreign vessels (Chinese excepted) measuring 95,230 tons. This large increase of shipping business was evidently due to extended traffic between the Colony and Australia, the United States, the Philippine Islands and Japan, while trade with British India remained about the same as before. Of a daily average of 107 vessels in port in 1869, fully 18 per cent. were steamers. The doubling of the number of the steamers of the Messageries Impériales and the Pacific Mail Company, and the formation of two additional local Steamship Companies, left no doubt of the undiminished importance of the Colony in connection with the trade of China and Japan.
With the commencement of the year 1870, the long continued commercial crisis was felt to be over, and the pent up energies of local enterprise burst forth anew. The Chamber of Commerce interested itself in Baron von Richthofen's exploration of Western China (December, 1869) and sent (February, 1870) a commercial explorer of their own (M. Moss) to ascertain the commercial capabilities of the West River (Canton to Nanningfu). Mr. Moss travelled through Kwangtung and Kwangsi into Yunnan, but his report was not encouraging. The Hongkong and Whampoa Dock Company, under the direction of Mr. W. Keswick, amalgamated with itself the older Union Dock Company under the direction of Captain J. B. Endicott (March 8, 1870), and increased its capital to one million dollars. The Indo-Chinese Sugar Company was formed (April 28, 1870) to purchase a crushing factory at Saigon and to erect mills at various places in Cochin-China and in China. Two new Insurance Companies having been started in February, 1870, Chinese merchants established, in April, 1870, an Insurance
