THE TI-PING REVOLUTION.
CHAPTER I.
Arrival in Victoria.—The Happy Valley.—Hong-Kong.—Tanka Boat Girls.—Chinese Boatmen: their evil propensities.—Captain Mellen's Adventure.—Canton Girls.—Amusements in China.—Cafés Chantant.—The Exhibition.—Temple of Lanterns.—Chinese Character.—Piracy in China.—The "North Star."—Fate of the Crew.—Tartar Cruelty.—Adventure with Pirates.—Sporting.—Duck-shooting.—Chinese Hospitality.—Mandarin Barbarity.—Whampoa.—Marie the Portuguese.—Marie's History: her Escape.—Description of Marie: her Excitability: her Jealousy.
In the summer of 1859, I arrived before the town of Victoria, on board the good ship Emeu, and cast anchor in the blue waters of its shaded harbour. Victoria is the only town in the island of Hong-Kong, and, viewed from the bay, presents a very imposing appearance, in many respects resembling Gibraltar.
Like the city of the "Sentinel of the Straits," it is built from the very edge of the sea to some considerable distance up the mountains which constitute the principal portion of the island, and is almost entirely hemmed in by towering masses of time-worn granite, that constitute a grand and effective background to its princely buildings. Many of these noble edifices—the dwellings of European merchants and officials, and the British Government works—in the higher parts of the town are well ornamented by gardens; which, with several verdant little valleys in the hollows of the mountains, some low hills covered with a feathery semi-tropical foliage—Green Island, with its dense bushes on one hand, and Jardine's, crowned with a noble mansion of that firm, on the other—together with the multitude of junks and European shipping at anchor, and those under weigh crossing and enlivening the scene, afford a charming and picturesque tone to what would otherwise be the unrelieved massiveness and sterility of the place.
There is one particularly beautiful spot in the "Island of Sweet Waters," as it is poetically termed by the Chinese, that well repays the trouble of a visit. It is situated some five or six miles from the town, and is named Happy Valley. It is surrounded with luxuriant Asiatic foliage, from the midst of which occasional farm-houses peep out. A fine grassy level forms the centre of the valley, around which is constructed the Hong-Kong racecourse, and this is bounded by a broad carriage-road completely encircling the whole plain; while on the edges of the distant rising ground the burial-place of those Europeans who never return to their home rears above the surrounding evergreens its monumental sculpture.
Happy Valley is surrounded by mountains whose sloping sides are thickly clothed with vegetation; the trees, although of a stunted species, are thickly interlaced with undergrowth and an innumerable variety of evergreen bushes, through which murmur many mountain springs, that become in the rainy months swollen into torrents. Although a favourite resort of European residents, I hardly consider Happy Valley a good sanatorium; for, when visiting it at early sunrise, I invariably found thick, damp vapours shrouding it, slow to be dispelled by the morning sun, and strongly significant of fever, and "Hong-Kong fever" in particular.
The colony of Hong-Kong represents most perfectly the success of British enterprise in commercial matters; and, what is far more important, points to the true mode by which Christian and civilized nations may communicate with the Pagan and semi-civilized ones of Asia.