succeeded in getting out to the ships, as we know they can do with vessels anchored even a mile or more off a fever coast.
That malaria came in waves is certain from the old records. After 1843 there were no severe epidemics of fever for some years, but the continued existence of the infection in such places as Lyenicon and Pokfului, and around the south coast, near Aberdeen village, up to comparatively recent years, tends to confirm that it was malaria, and nothing else, which devastated the early arrivals. That the troops suffered more than civilians, proportionately, is easily explained by their close proximity to each other in barracks, so that a few infected mosquitoes could work havoc among them in a short while.
In the local military records relating to the opening up of the Kowloon peninsula in the Sixties, when temporary matshed barracks were erected practically on the site of those now standing, around and upon Gun Club Hill, there is reference to the devastation caused by fever among the troops. The digging of the land again coincided with the outbreaks, and this "disturbance" of the earth was blamed: another instance of being so near the solution and yet, in the days before Ross and Manson, so far from the great discovery.
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The prevalence of fever in the western part of the city was a matter for concern as late as the early Nineties.
In the local health records is a reference, in December, 1887, to a petition from certain residents of "the western district of the city of Victoria," complaining about the prevalence of fever in that locality. The Governor, Sir George Des Voeux, appointed a commission to investigate these complaints which was a most representative one, including among its medical members a naval surgeon.
But it is on the south of the island that malaria in a bad form has persisted until to-day. I understand that most of this has now been traced to Little Hongkong. This interesting village is about 170 years old, according to the descendants of the original Hakka settlers, who built a substantial village there round about the period 1760-65. Many of the inhabitants appear now to be emigrating, and most of the old village lies to-day in ruins. It deserves some record, lest Government anti-malarial resumptions and decay should eventually obliterate it from the landscape as well as from memory.
There is a large school of thought which maintains, probably quite correctly, that this village, the first to be taken notice of by English navigators some years before Hongkong became a Colony, gave its name to the whole island. The freshwater stream which flows past the village into a pleasant bay, led many sailors of old to anchor there when refitting and taking in fresh water, while their crews wandered ashore to stretch their legs. It was the first locality to be marked on old maps or roughly-sketched charts, with the vernacular name of Heungkong. What more natural than that when properly drawn maps came to be issued, the