especially as they saw clearly enough that the motive of the
conqueror was his own aggrandizement.

Unhappily, too, the next war between England and China,
though fundamentally due to the same conditions as the
``Opium War,'' was again precipitated by a quarrel over
opium, the lorcha Arrow loaded with the obnoxious drug and
flying the British flag being seized by the Chinese. Once
more they suffered sore defeat and humiliating terms of peace
in the treaty of 1858. The effort of the Peking Government to
close the Pei-ho River against an armed force caused a third
war in 1860 in which the British and French captured Peking,
and by their excesses and cruelties still further added to the
already long list of reasons why the Chinese should hate their
European foes.

Nor did foreign aggression stop with this war. In 1861,
England, in order to protect her interests at Hongkong, wrested
from China the adjacent peninsula of Kowloon. In 1886, she
took Upper Burma, which China regarded as one of her dependencies.
In 1898, finding that Hongkong was still within
the range of modern cannon in Chinese waters seven miles
away, England calmly took 400 square miles of additional territory,
including Mirs and Deep Bays.

The visitor does not wonder that the British coveted Hongkong,
for it is one of the best harbours in the world. Certainly
no other is more impressive. Noble hills, almost mountains,
for many are over 1,000 feet and the highest is 3,200, rise on
every side. Crafts of all kinds, from sampans and slipper-