resource of talking with the stewardess, who told me on the last day of
our imprisonment that she was "triste, triste," and "one mass of
bruises!"

In this same gale, but on a dry day, we came close up with the mainland
of Eastern Asia. Coasts usually disappoint. This one exceeded all my
expectations; and besides, it was the coast of Asia, the mysterious
continent which has been my dream from childhood--bare, lofty, rocky,
basaltic; islands of naked rock separated by narrow channels, majestic,
perpendicular cliffs, a desolate uninhabited region, lashed by a heavy
sea, with visions of swirling mists, shrieking sea-birds, and Chinese
high-sterned fishing-boats with treble-reefed, three-cornered brown
sails, appearing on the tops of surges, at once to vanish. Soon we
were among mountainous islands; and then, by a narrow and picturesque
channel, entered the outer harbor, with the scorched and arid peaks of
Hong Kong on one side; and on the other the yet redder and rockier
mainland, without a tree or trace of cultivation, or even of
habitation, except here and there a few stone huts clustering round
inlets, in which boats were lying. We were within the tropic of Cancer,
but still the cold, coarse bluster continued, so that it was barely
possible to see China except in snatches from behind the deck-house.

Turning through another channel, we abruptly entered the inner harbor,
and sailed into the summer, blue sky, blue water, a summer sun, and a
cool breeze, while a tender veil of blue haze softened the outlines of
the flushed mountains. Victoria, which is the capital of the British
colony of the island of Hong Kong, and which colloquially is called
Hong Kong, looked magnificent, suggesting Gibraltar, but far, far
finer, its peak eighteen hundred feet in height--a giant among lesser
peaks, rising abruptly from the sea above the great granite city which