HONG KONG, January 10.

The year seems already getting old and frowzy. Under these blue skies,
and with all the doors and windows open, I should think it midsummer if
I did not look at the calendar. Oh, how I like blue, sunny skies,
instead of gray and grim ones, and blazing colors instead of the dismal
grays and browns of our nondescript winters!

I left Canton by the Kin-Kiang on Monday, with two thousand Chinese
passengers and two Portuguese missionary priests, the latter wearing
Chinese costume, and so completely got up as Chinamen that had they not
spoken Portuguese their features would not have been sufficient to
undeceive me. They were noble-looking men, and bore upon their faces
the stamp of consecration to a noble work. On the other steamer, the
Tchang, instead of a man with revolvers and a cutlass keeping guard
over the steerage grating, a large hose pipe is laid on to each
hatch-way, through which, in case of need, boiling water can be sent
under strong pressure. Just as we landed here, about five hundred large
fishes were passed through a circular net from a well in the steamer
into a well in a fishing boat, to which all the fishmongers in Hong
Kong immediately resorted.

(I pass over the hospitalities and festivities of Hong Kong, and an
afternoon with the Governor in the Victoria Prison, to an interesting
visit paid with Mr., now Sir J. Pope Hennessey to the Chinese
Hospital.)

We started from Government House, with the Governor, in a chair with
six scarlet bearers, attended by some Sikh orderlies in scarlet
turbans, for a "State Visit" to the Tung-Wah Hospital, a purely Chinese