It was situated in a swamp, and certain quarters of the town were invaded by the high tides several times each month. During the summer the blazing tropical sun converted the place into a cesspool. It reeked with disease, and cholera and malaria were ever rampant.
Seven years later, when I first saw the city, it presented the appearance of a well-built European centre; possessed floating wharves, well-laid-out streets, fine boulevards and good roads. An excellent system of surface drainage was being laid down, and the thoroughfares and many of the buildings were already lighted by electricity.
BOULEVARD PAUL PERT, HAÏPHONG.
Since 1891 Haïphong has steadily increased in area and importance, and is now an up-to-date, progressive city.
Our steamer only stayed here about an hour, the time required to draw a day's rations for the detachment.
We now learnt that our destination was Phulang-Thuong, an important town situated on the Song-Thuong, about 65 miles inland from Haïphong, at which place the depot of the 2nd Battalion of our regiment was stationed.
We were soon off again, and to our relief the aspect of the surrounding country became a more hospitable one.
The flat expanse of slime, mud and mangroves had disappeared. Now the river ran in between high artificial embankments; beyond these, on either side, could be seen a well-cultivated plain whose only limit was the horizon, and which was divided up by low banks of earth into holdings of every shape and size. It had the appearance of an enormous fantastic chess-board, on which none of the divisions were of the same dimensions and few of them rectangular. All of them, however, were of the same colour—green; not green of a uniform shade, for each field seemed to possess a different nuance of that colour, from the light, nearly yellow, tint of the freshly-planted rice, to the dark, almost brown, hue of the tobacco plant.