BLAKE, SIR HENRY (1) Continuation.
SIR HENRY BLAKE'S PERIOD.
Those experiments resulted in immense benefit to people in that locality. The sympathy for the suffering of the poorer citizens of this Colony, so generously manifested by your Excellency, deeply touched them, and moved us as the representatives of the district which came within your special and benign care, to an expression of our gratitude to you. It was the unprompted desire of every one of us that a souvenir should be subscribed for and presented to your Excellency now that you are so shortly to leave Hongkong at the conclusion of your period of administration here. This souvenir takes the form of a ceremony of small intrinsic value, but testifies none the less to the sincere appreciation and thankfulness of those who feel so sensibly your Excellency's solicitude for the assuagement of their troubles, when beset by the calamitous ills such as befall us with each direful visitation of the dreadful scourge. We beg you, Sir, to accept the memento with our reiterated thanks. With this expression we couple the prayer that both you and Lady Blake may have long years before you to enjoy the blessings of health and prosperity and the reward of His Majesty for the unqualified success of your administration in Hongkong. Like the Chinese in this Colony, the natives in the new sphere of your sympathetic government will not take long to realize what a loss we suffer by the inestimable gain they attain in your elevation to a higher post in the service of the King in Ceylon.
Sir Henry Blake suitably replied:-
A few days later, he was also accorded a eulogistic farewell on his last appearance to preside over the Legislative Council.
Sir Henry ... Governor of Ceylon up to 1907, when he went into retirement. He died in 1918, at the age of 78.