to be 48 feet long and seven inches thick, at the house of a secular ecclesiastic in the suburb of Santa Cruz. This gigantic reptile had been confined for 32 years in a large wooden cage, where it had enjoyed such a carefully tended existence that it had fairly outlived the good padre, and was now for sale by his heirs. The indolent animal, constantly lying almost motionless among the sand, is fed only once in every four weeks, when it is usually presented with a young pig.
On the 24th of June the members of our Expedition went on board the small steamer plying to Cavite, where lay the frigate, on board which all necessary preparations had been made. Now, on the eve of departure, almost every one of our number mourned the disappointment of cherished expectations. The inclemency of the weather had not alone precluded our undertaking the more distant excursions which would have repaid our researches in the natural history of the islands, but had even interposed serious obstacles to our wanderings in the immediate neighbourhood; moreover, up to the very moment of our departure the Government manifested the utmost indifference to the objects of the Expedition, while even the educated portion of the Spanish residents never took the slightest notice. The more reason therefore is it, under such circumstances, that we should not be unmindful of the few, such as Messrs. Steffan, Schmidt, Wegener, Wood, Fullerton, Fonseca, Girandier, and Creus, who, with warm interest in our plans, furnished us with
new material relating to the Philippines and their inhabitants, and left us with the agreeable prospect of a permanent exchange of literary and scientific labours.
At one A.M. of the 25th June we weighed anchor in the harbour of Cavite, on our voyage to the Empire of China. The land breeze, which sets in regularly every night, carried us clear out of the Bay of Manila, but in the open sea outside we found, contrary to expectation, instead of the S.W. monsoon, light variable winds and calms, which materially interfered with our progress. At last, when we were about mid-way across the China Sea, we fell in with the long-looked for S.W. wind, which speedily wafted us to the next station we were to visit, the British colony of Hong-kong, or Victoria. With favourable winds the voyage from Manila to Hong-kong, a distance of about 700 nautical miles, is four or five days' sail; owing to the constant contrary winds we were double that time.
Already, before we came in sight of land, a Chinese fishing vessel had put a pilot on board in the shape of a long-tailed son of the Celestial Empire, who jabbered English in a fashion to set the hair on end, and was lost in wonder at our flag, which he had never before seen. We afterwards found that the dialect used by our pilot was what is called Canton-English, such as is spoken by all Chinese who have dealings with the British, and consisting exclusively of a most ludicrous distortion of the commonest English phrases.
About noon on the 4th July we sighted the Chinese coast;
and before sundown we had passed the Lemmas islands, and found ourselves in the island-studded, many-bayed archipelago at the mouth of the Canton River, where the English have selected Hong-kong, with its admirable harbour, for the site of their colony. Thousands of fishing-boats covered the surface of the ocean all around us, always sailing parallel with each other, in fact, quite a fleet of fishermen, who, on a favourable opportunity, add a little buccaneering, and have numerous secure retreats among the thousands of coves all around, so that even up to the present day they can carry on almost unpunished their piratical attempts upon their own fellow-countrymen, as well as upon foreigners ignorant of their danger. It was the first time we had seen in any numbers the Chinese Junk, with its strange-looking rigging. On most of these small but clumsy vessels there was cut or painted on either side of the forecastle a huge eye, as though the crew were anxious to increase the power of vision of their vessel, so that it might more readily pick its way through the numerous dangerous reefs and coral banks. On the other hand the superstitious sea-faring Chinese sometimes veil and cover up the eyes of their vessels, in order that they should not behold certain strange things passing by, as, for instance, a dead body, or an approaching thunder-storm, and not be frightened by them.[111]
The nearer we approached the coast, the more was our
gaze rivetted by a landscape of the most imposing character, and now not owing to the altitude of the hills (for the highest peak is only 3000 feet), but to the grandeur of their form and their contour. Here are sharp, needle-shaped pinnacles, their steep rocky cones reminding one of the Sugar Loaf at Rio, and then round shoulders of hills, and far-extending ranges, penetrated by deep defiles, all nearly perpendicular, and without any extent of level land, and rising sheer out of the sea. These mountain ranges are almost entirely naked, or covered only with a scanty grass or bush vegetation: no tree, no forest hides the majestic groups of rocks and stones, and when the setting sun picked out with dark, well-defined shadows the sharp outline of the granite rock, it was as though there lay before us a "bit" of the Swiss Alps, bathed in the sea as far as the limit of forest-vegetation, and our sailors contemplated with redoubled enjoyment a scene which reminded them of their native Dalmatia.
As the night was dark, with neither moonlight nor light-house (of which latter there is unfortunately an utter lack here), we could not venture to wind our way through the narrow channel into the harbour of Hong-kong, on the north side of the island, and we anchored therefore about 9 P.M. on the west side, in the Lemmas Channel; and with the first beams of the sun, on the morning of the 5th July, we stood in to the enchanting harbour of Hong-kong. Where the previous day we could descry from seaward hardly any traces of human activity in the hills and rocks along the coast,