population of one hundred and sixty thousand, of which only seven
thousand, including soldiers and sailors, are white, and possessing the
most imposing city of the East on its shores, the colony is only forty
years old; the island of Hong Kong having been ceded to England in
1841, while its charter only bears the date of 1843. The island, which
is about eleven miles long, from two to five broad, and with an area of
about twenty-nine square miles, is one of a number situated off the
south-eastern coast of China at the mouth of the Canton river, ninety
miles from Canton. It is one of the many "thieves' islands," and one of
the first necessities of the administration was to clear out the hordes
of sea and river pirates which infested its very intricate
neighborhood. It lies just within the tropic of Cancer in lat. 22
degrees N. and long. 114 degrees E. The Ly-ee-moon Pass, the narrow
strait which separates it from the Chinese mainland, is only half a
mile wide. Kowloon, on the mainland, an arid peninsula, on which some
of the Hong Kongese have been attempting to create a suburb, was ceded
to England in 1861. The whole island of Hong Kong is picturesque. The
magnificent harbor, which has an area of ten square miles, is
surrounded by fantastic, broken mountains from three thousand to four
thousand feet high, and the magnificent city of Victoria extends for
four miles along its southern shore, with its six thousand houses of
stone and brick and the princely mansions and roomy bungalows of its
merchants and officials scrambling up the steep sides of the Peak, the
highest point of the island, carrying verdure and shade with them. Damp
as its summer is, the average rainfall scarcely exceeds seventy-eight
inches, but it is hotter than Singapore in the hot season, though the
latter is under eighty miles from the Equator.

The causes by which this little island, which produces nothing, has
risen into first-rate importance among our colonies are, that Victoria,