200
"1
and Colonel SEELY seems to be "hedging somewhat on this point. When replying to a series of questions put by the same mem. It is ber in July, Colonel SEELY said: “ confidently expected that either directly or indirectly, through the increase of trade with the interior of China, the Colony will be amply repaid for the money expended on construction.' We all hope so; but the present point of interest is how long shall we have to wait for this great increase of trade? Unfortunately there can be no confident expectation of such an immediate increase of trade as will relieve the tax payers from the apprehensions that a railway so heavily capitalised is, for some years, bound to be a burden on the finances of the Colony. The wording of the tele gram in our yesterday's issue suggests that the Under Secretary has a glimmering of such a possibility. We trust it may not be overlooked when the Government comes to consider what amount of relief they will afford the Colony in connection with its loss of opium revenue.
THE FROZEN PORK ENTERPRISE.
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
may
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[September 4, 1909.
Now that the Directoire gown has ceased to be fashionable, it was with something of a shock that I read the other day that Directoire bathing costumes were being worn. They may be all right for ladies at home who do not bathe, and who merely sit on the sand for the delectation of male observers, but I cannot imagine our Hongkong ladies, despite their fashionable ambitions, wearing such attire. I don't mean to suggest that their figures make it impossible-far from it, but the men would never allow it. Already when on launch picnics and sitting down (fully or partially dressed) to the interval between getting out of the water refreshments is considered too long, simply by reason of the delay caused by the ladies dressing and if that period of delay is augmented by the difficult shoehorn process of getting into a Directoire and the more difficult
operation of getting out of it, the impatient male people And a Mixed party would rise in revolt. without men would be somewhat of an anomaly.
does in the matter of taste. The experiment | great range of vision, and once he spotted his which is being made in the export of frozen quarry it would be easy to hook him with his grappling irons and raise him to the heavens food from China appears to have entailed a
before he unhooked him. In this way arrest heavy investment, but as the Company has and punishment might be combined--a con- had the matter under consideration for venience which would doubtless be appreciated many years, we may assume that they felt by our overwrought magistrates. reasonably sure of ultimate success before putting up at Hankow a big plant at a
Besides
pork, cost of some £30,000. the Company froze some 200 tons of broken into tins, so that they eggs
thus be carried free from chemicals to their refrigerating chamber in England; they have frozen also thousands of chickens and ducks, pheasant, enipe and wildfowl, from geese to teal, and some hog deer. What is absolutely necessary to ensure the success of the experiment is a ready sale for the food as soon as it arrives. While New Zealand lamb is sold in the English markets in a frozen condition, because the authorities are satisfied with the medical inspection at the port of shipment, in the case of this first shipment of Chinese pigs, the carcases had to be thawed for forty-eight hours before the meat could be put on the market, in order that thorough inspection of it might be made by the responsible public authority. As the inspection of this first consignment proved entirely satisfactory, it is not unreasonable from the Union Cold Storage Company for a to expect that under proper guarantees thorough inspection at Hankow, the Govern ment will presently agree to admit the company's consignments of frozen meat from China into the country practically on the same conditions that frozen meat is admitted from New Zealand and Australia, and so give the enterprise a better chance of success than it now commands. Evidently, if the prejudice with which it has been assailed can be successfully overcome, a very large. business is likely to develop.
RANDOM REFLECTIONS.
E
We are still anxiously waiting to learn how much we are henceforth to pay for our liquors, but the debate on the liquor resolution did not take place on Friday at the Legislative Council as expected - and the subject might very well be dropped altogether.
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(Daily Press, September 3rd.) The telegrams published about three weeks ago with reference to the reception given in London to the frozen pigs which the P. & 0. steamer Palermo carried home from Hankow, have left the general public in some doubt about the prospects of the new industry. A strong prejudice appeared to have been worked up against Chinese pork on political as well as hygienic grounds. As the Commissioner of Customs at Hankow remarks in his annual report, which has just been issued, the idea of China pigs being shipped for consumption in Eng- land causes Europeans to shudder, as it brings to their minds the scrawny scavenger of the streets disputing with the dogs for the choicer morsels, probably one of the most loathsome of animale.” Certainly that represents the idea of the China pig entertained by most Europeans acquainted with China. But Mr. SOGDEN supplies the reassuring information, which will be of great value to the importers and retailers, that the pig which is being frozen is the black, black and white, occasionally. even white, variety from Hunan, which, he tells us, is more like the chubby pig of the story hooks, and is probably the pig which was taken to England and America to improve home stocks. They are kept in farms, by the rich in their own houses” (the quotation marks are Mr. SUGDEN'S own), and are well fed on the creepers of red potato, rice chaff, dregs of grain, and leaves of wild shrubs, all chopped up and
The tragic murder of the Indian police in boiled together. They are, therefore, a species with which the European of the the New Territory has been responsible for a crop of suggestions. Perhaps the most interest- coast ports seldom, if ever, becomes acquing was the proposal to introduce mounted ainted, and it is no "malicious rumour that police. This and other suggestions are largely the Englishman in the East by no means based on an unreal and alarmist view of the considers the Chinese pig the succulent actual condition of affairs in the Dependency. morsel LAME's immortal Chinese found The New Territories are undoubtedly peaceful. it to be." It is a sober statement of The people are as a rule law-abiding and well- fact that the English resident in the coast behaved, and it is only temptation or the incur- sion of undesirables from outside which are ports generally shuns pork unless he has mostly responsible for the occasional outbreaks the assurance that the porker has been of lawlessness which shock the Colony by their reared by the Hongkong Dairy Farm, that brutality. Doubtless a few more European is to say, strictly in western habits. The police would be of advantage, but to take an curious remark is made in Mr. SUDGEN's alarmist view of the state of the New Territory report that in the Hankow market, Hunan because of one murder is to show an ignorance pigs are regarded as inferior to the Hupeh of the real conditions prevailing, breed, being said to have "an unpleasant smell, which makes it easily distinguished when cooked." It must not, however, be assumed that the European sense of smell would corroborate this description of the odour, for in the sense of smell the Oriental differs from an Occidental as widely as he
Friday was indeed a dog day at the Legislative Council. A proposal was made to increase the fee for a dog licence from three dollars to five, but whether it was made in all seriousness or whether it was a subtle joke is not very apparent from the reported discussion. Perhaps some of the gentlemen present at the discussion A joke should not go might enlighten us. unappreciated, even if we have a large Scottish community.
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the
Ridicule has already been showered on proposal to introduce mounted police, because there are no roads, or scarcely any roads, on which they could operate. Automobiles might be tried, as they have a reputation for going over anything. Better still, aeroplanes might be The policeman would have a found useful.
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Bat. I
It is wonderful what confusion of thought is to be found even in high places. Look at our local legislators, some of whom on Friday failed to distinguish what a Protestant was. suppose we should be charitable, “seeing as how: religious matters are not our forte in the East.
Despite the period of depression and the as the chairmen of keenness of competition, our local companies say before they announce
that dividend warrants will be ready, there are quite a number of marriages contemplated this number is larger than usual, and that some of autumn. I am told by one who knows that the
portance. i them will be social events of no mean im-
:
The cost of living in the East is an ever present grumble, and it made me smile to learn that an Indian who applied for a position here cited the low rate of exchange, the high cost of living, the duty of caring for a widowed mother and innumerable small brothers and sisters as reasons for asking a higher scale of remuneration The low than that enjoyed by his predecessor. rate of exchange and the high cost of living are decidedly good.
Apropos, the cost of living is the conversation I heard the other day about the expense of maintaining a family, which was neatly round- ed off by one gentleman quoting the inscription on a tombstone in Kansas:
Here our little Georgie lays, He neither cries nor hollers; re lived just two and twenty days. And cost us forty dollars.
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A correspondent referring to my paragraph last week on the Chinese applying pepper to an injury, especially a cut finger, writes to tell me that as a matter of fact pepper is a particularly good remedy to apply to a cnt. It will stop bleeding almost immediately, he says, and absolutely without pain. I am glad to be en- lightened and pass the information, on for the benefit of others.
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Someone wrote to the papers the other day complaining on the part of respectable residents of the nuisances in Wyndham Street. This provoked a reply from some wit who suggested that if the complainer removed to Kowloon he would be free from these nuisances. It is like the man who complained to his landlord of his hens being drowned by his premises being flooded and was told to keep ducks.
RODERICK RANDOM.
The annual report of Dr. J. W. Hartley, the 557 cases of malaria in the North and South Railway Medical Officer, shows that there were Face camps, Beacon Hill Tunnel, last year. In 1907 the number was 1,168. The cases of injury last year numbered 354 as compared with 371 in the previous year.