above named Kowloon by Public Auction under Captain Mell's Authority, three months before any arrival in China, that it was, even when I first visited Kowloon (for a day) in August 1841, in such a wild and uncouth chaos of immense masses of granite and other rocks? - that it was hardly accessible by a foot, either on the side of the water or land, that the Firm in question, by the application of science and extraordinary labor, and Expenditure of about one-hundred Thousand Pounds Sterling (£100,000) have not only made it available for their vast Mercantile concerns, but have rendered it an ornament and credit to the Colony, and have thereby, in my humble judgment.
176 judgment, incurred the high consideration and approbation of Her Majesty's Government by ... I also think it as well here to say, with reference to a remark made by Sir Thomas Cochrane and to part of Report on this island by Captain Sir Edward Belcher R.N. which I have perused lately, that my opinions do not coincide with theirs, as to the position held by Messrs Jardine Matheson & Co. being adapted for Military objects. I found my opinions on seeing that the position in question is completely overlooked on every side by higher hills and eminences, some of them within long musket range and all within two to three hundred yards, nor would it be possible, I conceive, at any expense whatever, to reduce
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