THE GEOGRAPHICAL SETTING
Hong Kong Island is eleven miles long from east to west and varies in width from two to five miles. It rises steeply from the northern shore to a range of treeless hills of volcanic rock of which the highest point is Victoria Peak (1,805 ft.) near the western end. Between these hills and the harbour lies the city of Victoria. The old part of the urban area runs up the steep hillside for hundreds of yards in narrow stepped streets and terraces, but the modern town stands mostly on a strip of reclaimed land averaging 200-400 yards wide which extends 9 miles along the southern shore of the harbour from Sulphur Channel to Lyemun Pass.
Between the island and the mainland of Kowloon lies the harbour, a natural and almost landlocked anchorage about 17 square miles in area, and of a width varying from one to three miles. The entrance from the east is by a deep-water channel through Lyemun Pass, five to nine hundred yards wide. On the western side the harbour is protected by a group of islands pierced by channels of various depths. The largest of these islands is Lantao which is nearly twice the size of Hong Kong Island. This harbour, lying midway between the main ports of Haiphong in Indo-China and Shanghai at the mouth of the Yangtse River, has become the gateway to South China and has grown to be one of the greatest seaports in the world.
The ceded territory of Kowloon originally consisted of a number of low dry foothills running southward from the escarpment of the Kowloon hills in a V-shaped peninsula two miles long and nowhere more than two miles wide. Most of these foothills have now been levelled and the soil used to extend the area by reclamation. The town of Kowloon now covers the
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