440
59.
"The horse exists in a high state of domesticity. As in Attica, so in Hongkong, there is small footing and little forage for horses. In both localities the animal was useless and expensive, and greatly in vogue. Strepsiades, at Hongkong, dreams as constantly of horses as did Phidippides at Athens. A badly bred Arab, worth £20 at Algiers and £10 at Tattersall's, is worth £250 at Victoria. There is a racecourse round which he will run once a year, and there are two miles of tolerable road along which he may be ridden daily by a long-booted and hunting-whip bearing proprietor, not scorning exiguis equitare campis. The buffalo and the horse, therefore, exist in a highly artificial condition upon this island; but I could not afford to exclude them from my notice of animated nature in Hongkong, seeing that the materials for observation on that subject are so very limited.
"In recompense for the small interest which the island can afford to the equine, bovine, and ovine genera, it is pleasant to be able to testify that the entomologist and the man curious in reptilia may find constant amusement.
"The winged cockroach is so finely developed, and so rich in fecundity, that specimens may be seen at all times, and in the most handsome drawing rooms crawling over the floors and tables by day, in size like mice, and banging against the lampglasses at night, in size like birds. The spiders are so colossal that you wonder how they can have fed themselves to such a size, and yet let so many flies be undevoured. The mosquitoes are so clever in insinuating themselves through your fortress of gauze, and they so keenly cut shoes out of your fleshy parts, that you hail the dawn of the day with the sensations of an Abyssinian or... The serpent tribe find the island favourable to their growth, for it was only a short time ago that a Regulus, in the uniform of a British Colonel was brought to a stand by a cobra five feet long - serpens portentosae magnitudinis. He was destroyed, happily, without any loss on the side of the British. The victory was rendered to an ungrateful country, for the last mail brings intelligence that the field allowance is stopped. The officers see their dollars pass in this dear Colony as shillings, and they gently complain that it is "hard lines." I confess I think so too. It is a small economy at the best.
"I have already spoken of the fatness and fertility of the Hongkong rats. When Minutius, the dictator, was swearing Flaminius in as his master of the horse, we are told by Plutarch that a rat chanced to squeak, and the superstitious people compelled both officers to resign their posts. Office would be held under great uncertainty in Hongkong if a similar superstition prevailed. Sir John Bowring has just been swearing in General Ashburnham as a member of the Colonial Council and if the rats were silent they showed unusual modesty. They have forced themselves, however, into a State paper. Two hundred rats are destroyed every night in the gaol. Each morning the Chinese prisoners see with tearful eyes and watering mouths a pile of these delicacies cast out in waste. It is as if Christian prisoners were to see scores of white sucking-pigs tossed forth to the dogs by Mahomedan gaolers. At last they could refrain no longer. Daring the punishment of tail-cutting, which follows any infraction of prison-discipline, they first attempted to abstract the delicacies. Foiled in this, they took the more manly course. They indicted a petition in good Chinese proving from Confucius that it is sinful to cast away the food of man and praying that the meat might be handed over to them to cook and eat. This is a fact, and if General Thompson doubts it, I recommend him to move for a copy of the correspondence.