51.
In announcing this series of views to the public, the author respectfully intimates to the community of this Colony, that the first series of his views, accompanied by a list to receive the subscribers' names, will be sent for inspection, and subscription to their respective residences and that, should they, the best judges of the correctness of his drawings, deem them worthy of sufficient encouragement to warrant his incurring the expense of publication, he will send his views to be lithographed, in order that subscribers may have their copies as early as possible.
Commenting on this advertisement, the newspaper said:
We direct attention to Mr. Bruce's advertisement, and as the publication of his illustrations of Hongkong will mainly depend upon the encouragement he receives from the few European inhabitants of the Colony, and their countrymen at Canton, and the other Consular ports, it becomes desirable that they freely support a work which will be so creditable to Mr. Bruce, and at the same time give a true picture of the results of British energy, which, in three years, has covered a barren and desolate spot, with edifices scarcely to be surpassed even in the East.
It is unnecessary to allude to the high merits of Mr. Bruce's drawings, as we observe that he intends that one or more shall accompany the subscription list; but we cannot avoid expressing regret, that after long service, he does not hold a more lucrative appointment in the Colonial establishment,
Page 472
In the current issue of The Rock official organ of the Catholic Church in Hongkong, that able scholar, the Rev. Father D.J. Finn, S.J., asks the question "Was Old Hongkong in China?" and deals with the subject in most interesting fashion. The Old Hongkong of Father Finn's article takes one back twenty or thirty centuries and contains no trace of "tame modernity."
The Old Hongkong dealt with in these daily articles has, up to the present, covered only that period from the British annexation to a few decades ago. It has been written with the object of enlightening present-day inhabitants of the efforts of the island's early colonisers who turned a barren, rocky land into one of the greatest trading ports of the world.
To-day, however, I propose to delve deeper in the past, to draw back the curtains of centuries instead of decades, and to deal with the days when the Peak sheltered taipans of another face who made their money from plunder on the high seas. This article is based largely on a lecture on the traditions and historical associations of the Hongkong Chinese, delivered in 1898, by Mr. W. Machell.
Father Finn, in his article in The Rock, claims that at Aberdeen, at least a thousand years ago, there were people living on each side of the entry from the sea. Certain, however, is the nationality of these inhabitants. What they actually were, may never be known.
Indications are that they were not Chinese. What is not inhabitants. What they