In 1851, when the English took possession of the island of Hong-Kong, it was but a rugged conical-shaped rock, dreary and forbidding in appearance. The Chinese then living on it were enraged at the intrusion of the foreigners, and one of them, the only baker on the island, resolved to dispose of all the intruders at one blow. He decided to poison them, and with this end in view he put arsenic into all the bread he supplied to the foreigners. He over-reached himself, for the dose was too strong, and suspicion was at once aroused. Those who tasted the bread escaped with violent sickness, and the English were not going to abandon the place for a reason so insignificant as that.
FIG. 6.—A CHINESE COURTESAN.
Hong-Kong is now a maritime port of the first rank, and its harbour is one of the finest and most beautiful in the whole world. The town boasts of hotels managed on the European system, and the slopes of the rocks are covered from the sea-shore to the highest point of the island with tasty villas. It is to opium, that other poison responsible for the death of so many Celestials, and as potent in its effects as the arsenic with which the patriotic baker tried to kill off all the foreigners, that Hong-Kong owes its immense prosperity. The French did much to aid the English in inaugurating that prosperity in 1857 and 1858, when they joined them as allies in the brief campaign which resulted in the taking of Canton and the signing of the celebrated Treaty of Tien-tsin. The various stipulations of that treaty, the full significance of which the Chinese do not seem to have realized at the time, included the right to the allies of appointing diplomatic agents to the Court of Pekin, and the opening of five fresh ports to European commerce, whilst a strip of territory on the mainland, opposite to the island of Hong-Kong, was ceded to the British colony. The benefits which accrued to France were small, but the increase of British trade was enormous, and from that time to this the grand harbour has been: one of the chief naval stations of the East.
In spite of its prosperity and importance, however, the town is anything but a pleasant place to stop in, and the foreign visitor soon gets tired of being jostled about by busy coolies and tipsy sailors. The great delight of the latter is to get drunk in the brandy-stores of Victoria Street, and then to dance, not, strange to say, with women, but without partners, to the music of a violin and a big drum. In the evening the floating and resident population alike resort in crowds to the opium-dens and houses of ill fame in the upper portions of the town. No one seems to feel any shame at being seen to enter these places, the windows of which are wide open, so that all can look into the brightly illuminated rooms, whence proceeds the sound of oaths in all manner of languages, whilst the loud clash of gongs mingles with the muffled songs of the Chinese beauties, and every now and then a shower of crackers is flung into the street below, bursting into zigzags of fire on the heads of the startled passers-by. In the eyes of the masters of the island, the intense commercial activity of the day atones for the dissipations of the night.
FIG. 7.—HWANG-TIEN-SHANG TI, THE GOD OF HEAVEN.
(In the Guinet Museum.)
THE GAME OF MORRA