On a lovely Sunday morning we embark on the steam tug, and once more, for the third and last time, go down to Woosung. In an hour we are on board the Messageries Maritime's s.s. Calédonien, critically surveying our home for the next five weeks.
The Messageries line has the advantage of the P. and O. in that they are more generous in giving separate cabins, the cuisine is said to be better, and indeed they take trouble to make it so, sending the cooks every two years back to a restaurant in Paris. It is also an immense boon (which everybody who has travelled much will appreciate) to have fixed places for dinner only, and at the other meals a free choice of companions. The saloon is spacious, and there is a splendid promenade deck, which is, however, somewhat spoilt by the influx of too numerous, second-class passengers, who share the privilege of using it.
Harbour of Hong-Kong.
The north-east monsoon is with us, and in two days and a half from leaving Shanghai, and after passing through the Straits of Formosa, between the mainland of China and the island of that name, past Foochow and Amoy, which are too far distant to be seen, we anchor at Hong Kong at midnight. Though dark, it is a starlight night. Hong Kong, or "Good Harbour," presents itself to us in bright electric arches of light, thrown far up on the sides of the peak, whilst its beautiful harbour is traced out for us by the twinkle of lights from the sampans, moored in hundreds along the wharf, by the swiftly moving jinricksha lights coursing along the road of the sea-shore, and the dots of lights on the rocking masts or the gleaming eyes of steam-tugs in the harbour.
We have decided to give up Canton, see what we can of Hong Kong in the time the steamer stays, and not wait a week for the next mail.
I was once told that no one has ever done justice to the beauties of Hong Kong, and as we landed at sunrise on the quay I was inclined to agree to this. The deep verandas of the Eastern-looking houses, with their pale pink and drab tints, the cool arcades, and above all the tropical wealth of vegetation, makes Hong Kong the prettiest of Eastern cities.
Leaving Queen's Road, we are carried up in chairs under a lovely overhanging avenue of banyan trees, whose huge knotted roots lie round the path, whilst from the grateful shade of their thick leaves above, depend the long thread-like tendrils, forming a transparent curtain. Past the grey, weather-stained cathedral we go, hidden away in a little recess under the hills, past the barracks, whence sound the bagpipes of Princess Louise's Highlanders, to the station of the mountain railway up the peak. "The Peak"—what would Hong Kong be without this prominent feature? True, by keeping off the sea-breezes and by penning the town in the narrow strip between the harbour and the mountain, it makes it steamy, unhealthy, fever-stricken and well-nigh uninhabitable in summer, but then it provides a sanatorium on the many summits of its heights, where every available platform is occupied by a house.
Unflinchingly straight up runs the line of the railway, and as we ascend, we look down on the roofs of the houses, perched without any sequence, up and down the side of the hills, into gardens and tennis courts, and the green waters of a reservoir below; over the black and white speckled mass that stands for the town, further out to the harbour, a blue pond studded with black spots by the steamers, whilst the sampans are brown dots. The range of barren rocky mountains close round the harbour, and there is Koolong, with its wharves and godowns, on the Chinese mainland, whilst we are on the Island of British soil. It is a beautiful view, this bird's-eye panorama of the town and harbour, from Victoria gap.
You must see the Peak to realize its real height, its scarcely sloping shoulders, covered with tropical growth in the valley, growing scantier and scantier, until you reach the summit, bare and rocky. Two enormous hotels, and many houses, populate the spacy crest. And the peep over the other side of green rounded hills, running down to the sea, is simply lovely, whilst the views from every point are far-reaching and exhaustive. We take chairs and go to the point, but one degree lower than the topmost one, where stands the signal station, to the bungalow of Government House. Early as it is, and late in the season, we find the heat terrific. Everyone is obliged to come and live up here in the summer, the nights in Hong Kong bringing no relief, and the difference in the temperature is often as much as 9°. As we return we meet all the business men, in the coolest of white costumes, being carried in chairs by coolies in smart uniforms of white with blue or scarlet sashes, to the station, going down to town for the day's work.