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scenery of the same area. He wrote,
"In general, the south side of Hong Kong Island is far more picturesque and less bleak than the north. The villages we saw, unlike the mat-huts in the harbour, are exceedingly neat in appearance with blue tiled and white walled houses."14
Nonetheless, there were attractive places on the north and east too. A description taken from the English language Canton Press of January 1842 mentions the view of the whole valley and village of Wong Nei Chung obtained from a gap cut in a hill following the line of one of the new roads, and how the branch road to the east
"takes one to the village of 'Soo Kon Poo', at present a sequestered, well wooded and very pretty part of the island"+15
a character it has not entirely lost even today!”
Thomas Allom's celebrated View of China, for which the text was prepared from various works by Revd. G.N. Wright, also pays tribute to the natural beauties of the island:
"The maximum length of the isle is about eight miles, its breadth seldom exceeding five; its mountains of trap-rock are conical, precipitous, and sterile in aspect, but the valleys that intervene are sheltered and fertile, and the genial climate that prevails gives luxuriance and productiveness to every spot, which, by its natural position, is susceptible of agricultural improvement."
And in another place:
"Few areas so limited include so many scenes of sylvan beauty as the sunny island of Hong Kong. The country immediately behind Queen-town (sic) is peculiarly rich in romantic little glens, or in level tracts, adorned with masses of rock, in the fissures of which the noblest forest-trees have found sufficient soil for their support. These wood-crowned crags rise abruptly from wide-spread rice-grounds that closely encircle them; so