240
crossed which has been done by bridges of iron and concrete platforms on solid stone abutments and piers. The road is carried along the sea front of Kow loon City and will form a considerable protection from the sea during easterly gales. For the present it runs about half a mile beyond the City, but should eventually be carried on to Saikung. The trace, on a good carriage road gradient, has been made for 5 miles to the Customs Gap.
43. A much needed connection, referred to also in para. 29 above, has been made at the trifling cost of $1,300 between the East and West sides of the peninsula by extending the "Wells" road from Yaumati to join the Kowloon City road near the C.M.S. Mission Church and the historical Hill of the Sung.
44. In para. 95 of the Report for 1898 the following remarks referring to the Victoria Jubilee Road were made :-
"It was hoped that the close of 1898 would have shewn good progress with the Victoria Jubilee Road. Plans and Estimates were ready in June, and by December fully six miles should have been well in hand, but delays, such as are apparently inseparable from all works projected in Hongkong, have blocked the way in this case, and the first sod" is as yet unturned. The Public Works Department, having no end in view but the public good, feel much disappointed and disheartened at this apparently unnecessary delay.”
The deadlock continues and another year has passed without a start being made.
45. The drainage of Rural Building Lots at the Peak as hitherto carriel out, namely in a similar manner to houses in the City, seems a mistake. A much more sensible and sanitary arrangement would be to treat each house separately, so that no tenant should be liable to suffer for the sins of others. A house joined on to a general system of drainage may be kept in a perfect state of cleanli- ness, all rubbish regularly buried or burned, drains kept clean and flushel, &c. and yet be poisoned with sewer gas from a house half a mile away. Filthy liquid in underground sewers escapes the purifying action of air and aerobic organisms; a broken pipe, unseen and therefore unsuspected, a blockage from any cause, may lead to the putrefaction of the contents of the sewer, and the return of poisonous gas to all the houses on the system. This is rendered impossible by adopting open. surface drains. There is nothing to be got rid of daily from human habitations which cannot be wholesomely made use of for the benefit of mankind, no more perfect use for bath water and other household slops could be devised than to throw them broadcast on tennis or croquet lawns, or use them in the kitchen garden, to the latter all night soil should go direct, the earth worms, fungi and bacteria with which the "Living Earth" teems, will in a very short space of time remove er change all that is hurtful by humification and oxidation. As Dr. VIVIAN POORE says:-
"The part played in the economy of nature by fungi and bacteria-the new learning of the last half century-is an addition to human knowledge which is destined to revolutionize our views on many natural phenomena.”
In towns this common-sense disposal of sewage is impossible, and the underground pipes are a necessary evil, but it is not so in houses on the hill sides where a few square yards of terraced ground could with safety receive, absorb, and purify the daily refuse of the house. The bath water should either run direct on to the land, or into open cisterns for distribution on the land, the kitchen water should run in open channels to the kitchen garden, where all rubbish including night soil should be deposited daily and slightly covered with earth. The house and chair coolies would do the gardening for the sake of the vegetables they could raise, and scavenging contractors would be no longer needed. The following sketch of how a cabbage garden at the Peak is watered and how it should be done was written some time ago:-
"The moisture raised by the action of the sun from the surface of the ocean descends in rain on the Peak whence it is permitted to run to waste, but not altogether in natural chan- nels, as it is intercepted by various traps and gullies to flush sullage drains of doubtful necessity. However, much of it eventually reaches Pokfulam. Here its course is stayed and it is stored up for use in a reservoir which cost $223,000. In due course it is let out through an elaborate system of valves and gauges into the Pokfulam conduit, a channel 3 miles in length constructed round the hill side of masonry in cement and carried across gullies and ravines in aqueducts of massive construction. The next process it goes throug is filtration and a fairly expensive process this is, and after being purified and sterilized it passes into the clear water reservoir below the filters. So far gravitation has done the work of moving the water along, but now it has to go back to the top of the Peak again, and for this purpose it is passed into the Bonham Road Station, and either by hydraulic or steam power, and at much expense, again lifted to the top of the Peak where some time back it was dropped from the clouds. Here again it has to be stored until required in a costly reser- voir, from which it is sent through mains and service pipes into the various residencies. Now the gardeners' opportunity has come, and through a patent screw-down tap, the water for the cabbages is drawn, much less suited for the purpose than it was in its original state.