The last of the series of eight pictures acquired by the Hongkong Government recently, and reproduced by kind permission of H.E. the Governor, is published to-day. It is a view of Aberdeen Street, Hongkong, in 1846, drawn by Mr. Bruce, being one of the series of sketches he afterwards had lithographed in London. We know from comparison of his other drawings that he was meticulously accurate, and being an architect by profession was particularly careful in his perspectives and delineation of buildings. In this scene at the lower end of Aberdeen Street the harbour and Queen's Road can be discerned in the background; we have, therefore, a good idea of the type of locality represented, and a proof that in the early years the place was a fairly fashionable European suburb. The houses shown are obviously of a better class, and the groups seen in the roadway include European figures.
This brings us to the consideration of the early settlement of the Colony of Hongkong. It was mainly concentrated on the narrow strip of level or slightly sloping land along the south of the harbour, with a few outcrops at places like East Point and Happy Valley. For a time, the Wongneichong area was settled by Europeans, and in the earliest years some houses went up there, in addition to the premises which Jardines built at East Point. But malaria, and the distance from the heart of the growing city, rendered the Happy Valley region less popular after a few years, and the dwellings erected there—which the old records tell us were of a more or less temporary nature, mainly planking on stone foundations, with mat roofs—were practically all abandoned.
The two really popular, and select, residential localities were throughout the Forties the immediate eastern and western suburbs of the city—Spring Gardens (our present Wanchai) on the one hand, and the area west of Wyndham Street (including Aberdeen Street) on the other. There was thus, about the time Mr. Bruce made his sketches, a central city portion mainly composed of business premises, including warehouses, Government offices, churches, and military and naval establishments, much as to-day, with popular residential suburbs on either side.
In visualising the old city of Victoria (first officially so called in December 1843) we can see how the western limits became developed and built upon. Partly along the ravines already existing, roadways were gradually constructed, mostly short ones of necessity, linking the old Main Street (as Queen's Road was known in the first two years of the Colony) with the terraces a little higher up where Robinson and Caine Roads now run. From the old maps and sketches we learn that most of these roads had been constructed, built alongside and named by the time the Colony was some four or five years old. The names selected commemorated well-known personages of the period, chiefly statesmen or other prominent people: hence Lyndhurst Terrace, Wellington Street, Cochrane Street, and Aberdeen Street; Wyndham Street, we have noted (see 10-1-34), was also constructed at this time, but the origin of the name is still unexplained. The others are easily traced, and will be dealt with in due course.
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