In descending, we return to the main thoroughfare of Queen's Road, and after some shopping, go to the City Hall, and the marble palace of the Shanghai and Hong Kong bank, where I wait outside to watch the ever-varying stream of passers-by. Chinamen in their cool cotton jackets and glazed pantaloons, coolies with their bamboo-slung burdens, sedan-chairs, jinrickshas, wheelbarrows, chairs, Sikh policemen with their scarlet turbans, Cinghalese, Parsees, mingling with our own officers and soldiers, under the shadow of the trees.
And then we drive out to the Happy Valley, and come suddenly upon that beautiful green lawn, lying so naturally in the midst of luxuriantly wooded hills. It is truly a felicitous little spot, with its racecourse marked out by white railing and its Grand Stand. But it is the cemetery which fills us with admiration, and one would fain that the Happy Valley were not desecrated by the racecourse, but rather consecrated to the peaceful repose of the dead. They are separated only by the breadth of the road.
Of all the God's acres in all parts of the world, including the beautiful one of Mount Auburn, at Boston, but perhaps excepting the English cemetery on the heights of Scutari, at Constantinople, or that at Cannes, this one of the Happy Valley is the most perfect. Entering by a gate in the walls, you find yourself in a tropical garden, skilfully laid out, and growing around you in profuse luxuriance,—palms with graceful waving arms, mighty clumps of feathery bamboos, delicate spreading tree ferns, crotons of orange and yellow and variegated green, hibiscus with their single blood-red blossom, colias, camellia and azaleas, bushes of flowering wax-like alamanders, trailing masses of purple buganvillea, all the hot-house flowers we prize at home, and that grow so unwillingly with us, when compared to this almost oppressive wealth of nature. Amongst the bright gravel paths and green lawns, rise massive pillars, granite crosses and cenotaphs, memorials erected by soldiers and sailors to their comrades—to many who, alas! have perished from the deadly effects of a climate which yet produces all this beauty that is around us.
We return to luncheon at Government House, on the kindly invitation of General and Mrs. Barker, the acting-governor until Sir William Robinson arrives next month. With a scramble, and the aid of the Government steam-launch, we just catch the Calédonien as she weighs anchor. We passed out through the southern passage of the Island, on our way to Saigon, the capital of French Cochin China.
CHAPTER XII.
COCHIN CHINA.
For the last two days we have been in sight of the coast of Annam.
When shall we be at Cape St. Jacques? Shall we lose the tide? This is the question which one asks of the other on board. And by 6 a.m. we find ourselves at rest, waiting outside the bar of the river Dannai, for the tide to turn, to ascend inland to Saigon. Saigon is the French capital of Cochin China, or Indo-China, as it is called, and is the chief city of the provinces of Annam, Tonquin, and before long of Gambogia, when the present King dies.