HISTORY
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Chinese labourers took place, mainly to the Straits Settle- ments, Thailand and Java, the bulk of the emigrants travel- ling in European and American ships. Hong Kong was the chief port of emigration. Later, when news went round of the opening up of goldfields in California, there was a rush of Chinese to 'Kam Shan' (the Golden Mountains), which has ever since remained the vernacular name of San Francisco. When gold was discovered in Australia, not long afterwards, thousands more rushed to 'Sun Kam Shan' (New Golden Mountains), which has become the vernacular name for Sydney. In the year 1852 alone over 30,000 Chinese emigrants passed through Hong Kong. The problems of housing such vast numbers, and preventing abuses arising in connexion with migration, presented severe problems to the government of the day.
In 1850 the series of revolts known generally as the Taiping Rebellion broke out in Kwangsi Province, and gradually spread throughout Southern China. This was the first instance where unsettled conditions on the mainland have brought to Hong Kong thousands of Chinese refugees of every social class and occupation. By 1855 the population was estimated at 72,000 and by 1861, with the Taipings still not defeated, it had risen to 120,000. The constantly recurring situation in which the Colony, almost without warning, has had to provide accommodation, food, water and other facilities for thousands of new arrivals-people with no local attachments and whose period of stay may be no more than a few years, perhaps even months-has presented successive governors of Hong Kong with problems that are unique and of exceptional difficulty. The word 'squatter' can be found in Government correspondence from the first year of the Colony's existence.
EXTENSIONS TO THE COLONY, 1860-99
By the Convention of Peking, 1860, which concluded the Second Anglo-Chinese War, Kowloon peninsula up to