feelings that one line of approval, which I have ever looked upon as my highest reward.
Now on the eve of bidding this Colony a final farewell it only remains for me to express my carnest wishes for its future progress and prosperity.
When I landed here eighteen years upon it's shore I found it a desert hill side. Bamboo Sheds were the best roof I saw then.
I leave it (to use a pardonable figure of Speech) bespread with Palaces, a beautiful and walled City, a miracle of British enterprise and dormant power upon the frontier of this Crumbling Empire. In its infancy a heavy drain upon Superior Rochequer - I have lived to see it in its consolidated strength, a self-supporting settlement, justifying its foundation, and thriving in every branch of its industry.
Let it not be supposed for one moment that I claim the credit of these happy results. I merely claim to have been one of the earliest and most confident Pioneers of the experiment, and to have been from the first, not uselessly I trust, associated with its realization.
But I cannot help claiming special notice for myself, though due to no merit of mine, that it was under my administration the Colony first made that extraordinary stride in prosperity which is sustained to this day. I happily seized the occasion of the exodus from Canton in 1854 and 1855, and the brief presence of those refugees amongst us, to originate the public...