176
REV. JAMES LEGGE
the end of June and the beginning of September, and was then removed from its quarters of which I have spoken on board ship. Many civilians also fell victims to Hongkong fever. The mortality was mainly owing to the want of accommodation for the multitudes who kept pressing into the new colony, and to the miasma set free from the ground which was everywhere being turned up. I remember visiting officers who were living in small huts reared on the hill behind the general's house. It was no wonder that one after another they were seized with fever, and either died, or were invalided home. Then the drains were for the time all open, and an atmosphere of disease, which only the strongest constitutions and prudent living were able to resist, might be said to envelope the inhabitants day and night.
I have intimated my opinion that there was no subsequent year of sickness and mortality so great as that of 1843; and nothing can be more delightful than the change in the colony in this respect. I do not think there is now a healthier residence on this side of Africa. This has been very gradually arrived at, by the increase of good houses, effectual drainage, the better supply of water, and the growth of trees and vegetation in general. There were other unhealthy years, and it came to be said that we might expect one of that character every seven years; but we have ceased to be troubled with the apprehension of such a periodic visitation. As to the healthiness from increased vegetation, I may mention that Dr. William Morrison, the colonial surgeon, who himself died from abscess of the liver, in October, 1883,* told me, some years before that event, that he had advised planting the ground on the south of the street behind the Murray Barracks with bamboos, as being of speedy growth. It was done, and soon the grove which every one of you knows, began to wave, and there was from that time a marked improvement in the health of the soldiers in those barracks.
The Colony, I have said, is now one of the healthiest residences, if not the very healthiest, in the East. The average of 14 years, reckoning back from the present, gives a rate of mortality for the foreign residents, not including the military, of a very little over 4 per cent; and in 1868, the rate was a trifle under 2 per cent, rather lower than the rate of mortality in Great Britain.
* SIC: Morrison died later than the date given, but I have no reference books available at the time of writing. Ed.