303
71. Though the absence of any Custom House and of any returns* of Imports and Exports, precludes any certain estimate of the amount of trade, it may be gathered from the above remarks in connection with "Shipping" that the enormous commerce of the Colony is in a condition of healthy progress. We may have not yet felt the full effects of the restrictive measures against Chinese in the United States and Australia, and of the decline in the Chinese Tea Trade; but there is good reason to think that any contraction from these causes is being rapidly compensated in other directions. But while commerce pure and simple, is, and must be for a long time. to come, the principal element of our prosperity; it is, I think, from manufacture that may be hoped the greatest progress of Hongkong in the future. We can readily have abundant and cheap supplies of raw materials; and there is available, to a practically unlimited extent, the cheap labour of China; while we have also, what is absent there, the advantage of general confidence that enterprise will not be unnecessarily hampered and mulcted of its legitimate reward. Already we have seen established in the last few years sugar refineries which are doing an exceedingly large and apparently prosperous business; we have moreover ship and boat building yards, rope works, ice works (now doing a large export trade) and some 30 minor industries enumerated in the Blue Book. But considerable as is the aggregate of manufacture already, it is in all probability inappreciable by comparison with what it would shortly become if there were to be any important reduction of the price of coal, which as being almost exclusively obtained from distant coun- tries is at present very costly ($8 to $16 per ton); and such a reduction may, I think, be regarded as only a question of time. Enormous and as yet completely undeveloped coal deposits are known to exist in China and other neighbouring countries; and there is abundant evidence that the progressive party among the Chinese are beginning to awaken to the advantage of utilising their mineral wealth. Indeed unless all of the various movements, there and elsewhere, for the production of coal in the neighbourhood, should prove abortive, it may be expected that the only element needed for rapid progress in manufacturing enterprise will in no long time be supplied.
72. To render more complete the information derived from the above account of events and observations on statistics, and in order to enable a fuller appreciation of the condition and progress of the Colony, it may be well to give, however imper- fectly, some idea of its outward appearance from a contrast of the present with the past.
73. There must be some still living who saw the island before the British occupation. If one of them, having been absent during the whole interval, were now to return, even the extremely salient and beautiful features of the natural landscape would scarcely enable him to identify with the Hongkong of to-day what he would remember as a bare rock, with a fisherman's hut here and there as the only sign of habitation, and a great sea-basin only very rarely disturbed by a passing keel.
74. For now he would see a city of closely built houses stretching for some four miles along the island shore, and rising, tier over tier, up the slopes of the mountain, -those on the upper levels interspersed with abundant foliage; while on the opposite peninsula of Kowloon, which was (until very recently) an uninhabited waste of undulating red rock, he would now see-in the distance prevalent verdure; -in the foreground and along the whole sea board numerous houses together with docks, great warehouses and other evidence of a large and thriving population. Again, the silent and deserted basin has become a harbour so covered with shipping, that even if he has been round the whole world, he could never before have seen so much in a single coup d'œil. At anchor or moving are, some 40 to 50 Ocean steamers, including ships of war; large European and American sailing vessels, and
*There are at present strong objections on the part both of Europeans and Chinese to any provision for such returns, partly because they would involve a certain restriction upon the complete freedom of trade, and partly on other grounds, arising from our vicinity to China.
The Shares of the China Sugar Company which own one of these refineries, not the largest, are now quoted in the market at 130 per cent, premium.
There are several docks-one of them a dry dock constructed entirely of granite which can take in, the largest vessels now afloat in the world, except perhaps the two recently built for the White Star Line. In the Kowloon warehouses of the Hongkong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Company, all in immediate contiguity and for the most part under one roof, may be seen at any time merchandise worth over half a million sterling.
§ The tonnage return of Hongkong shows it to be the 3rd port of the British Empire, and therefore (with the possible exception of New York, of which I have no statistics) the 3rd in the world. The aggregate burthen of shipping is greater than that of all the British possessions on the Continent of America, or than that of the four leading Colonies of Australia,