The KongKong Telegraph, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1988.
INHOSPITABLE
SEA
GRIN AND BEAR IT
By Lichty
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Da's MÅÉKESON'S—N
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March Medley-H. M. Coldstream Guards
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Deep River; Go Down,
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Moscs-fats Waller on the Organ
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Medley-New Mayfair Orchestra
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Puszta: The Wind has told me a story--R. Foort-Organ
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Woodcutters' Song-Comedy Harmonists 88814
Sho was, she was, she was: Just for fun-Max Miller.
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So finallas inia merum vir
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HONGKONG HOTEL GARAGE
Stubbs Rd,
T
A steamer alongside the quay at Djibou!!
HERE are few less
It seems quite strange, land- hospitable places in ing, to find men, black and thick- featured and impassive-looking, the world than the Tel. 27778-9.Red Sea and its coasts, even to realise that somehow or other clustering round the place, and in the winter, let alone in they manage to extract from midsummer. Through this such barren surroundings the inhospitable sca Italian and wherewithal to keep alive. French troops would pour The Red Sea ports-Port Su-
Vauxhall
10-14
1821 by Called Protary Kywalenik,
"Eat at the Captain's table? I should say not-we ain't used to caling with die help!"
TRY ALSO THE 12 H.P. into Djibouti, seaport of dan, Massawa, Assab, Djibouti, T. Paul Gregory Tells of
The
Somaliland,
French
very and Berbera, Aden-all look Massawa, se aport of much alike passing by them-n sen-front, a row of palm trees, Eritrea, if it comes to a
white houses, little encampments
countries.
Hongkong Telegraph.show-down between the two
Wyndham St., Hongkong 'Phone 26615 December 20, 1938
1
everlastingly dry. The sun
. of what is called civilisation existing precariously on the edge of desolation,
Hongkong's Most Famous Pirate
The heat is a torment, the very breeze scorches, like the hot air
The European officials who barbers blow on to your hair to come on board have a white, dry off a shampoo. You seem to tired look. Their faces bear the NOTHING is more dreaded by hy presenting his sister in breathe in dust, hopelessness, so marks of much boredom endur- peaceful mariners than the narriage to him. that the back of the mouth is cd. It is not difficult to imagine cry of "Pirates ahoy" The Needless to say that by the what their lives are like, for life utterance of these words chills
securely ensconced in his position beats down with a relentless, for a European in the East does the heart, and the mind recalls advent of the fifties, Wong was not vary much as between one with dread half-forgotten dazzling monotopy, and you have small station and another.
episodes in the history of the 43 a local buccaneer. His fleet of swift, piratical lorchas, man- not even the satisfaction of
Nor does it vary much as bera: memories of buccaneering ned by trusty crews ensured for knowing that nightfall will bring tween one European and another. aids, of surprises in the dark, him a steady stream of loot, so relief.
the pillaging of ships. the Your Frenchman or Italian may slaughter of captains and crews,
that his warehouse on the Praya. more soiled For night, too, is hot, sullenly, look rather
and and stories of passengers being was always ful. Not even Jean Lafitte, the most successful heavily hot, and the sturs scem creased than your Englishman, | kidnapped and held for ransom. pirate of the Louisiana
be more inclined to sit in pyja-
Nowadays, of course, thin cry a diplomatic in-beady, like eyes in a fat, perspir- mas in the evenings, have a more is seldom heard; for piracy is was more fortunate than he: for cident, a blockade of Algiers,ing face. Flies settle languidly indolent, frankly perspiring, practically an occurrence of the his shop in Queen's Road pro-
Black Man's Continent THE DEY OF ALGIERS hit the French Consul on the head with his fly-swatter.
They had been arguing (it why 1832) over a little matter connected with a bill for grain, and the conversation had be come heated.
There was
African coast began.
arc
a car
I have known such heat in
Hand.
*
was no five days.
some
seventy or ago. when the
J
chiefs was Ma-chaw Wong,
grass-
coast,
Viued the most effective cloak for the concealment of his real activities. What is more, the
* ✩
TN the meantime, he had become known throughout the Co- lony not only. ns ...a prosperous. merchant and ship-owner, but
Baven
and a shot was fired. A French on features too languid to twitch frankly homesick, forlorn air. past. Yet Expeditionary Force landed, and them away and fans just stir up But for all there is at the same righty years the conquest of this part, of the the sultriness. Trying to think round of sunset drinks, the same waters around this Colony, were infinite variety, and the remark-
monotonous hospitality, a sense the rendezvous for ns blood- is like trying to drive
of being transplanted in an un-thirsty a lot of fierce-sen-rovers ably low prices of his goods, That fly-swatter ought to through fog.
congenial, unfruitful soil.
as could be found anywhere, it proved unusually attractive, and rank with the Serajevo bullet.
must have been heard with nder such circumstances the business of Wong and Co. It started one of the most Upper Egypt when the tempera-
despairing frequency. That was
flourished, drama-packed incidents of the ture was 115 deg. in the shade,
an era of piratical coups, carried' Even the recent Abyssinianout
gangs, by well-organised history of the world the carve-and when, waking up at day- War would not revive Messrs. S. MOUTRIE & Co., Ltd. up of the continent of Africa
These under the leadership of able and break on
the roof of a house sleepy, unappetising regions. An ruthless men. among European nations.
where I slept, I looked over the Englishman who went to Massa- It has a very special interest desert, seeing the grey dawn like to me how the place still seemed wa during the conflict described to-day, because France and Italy
a threat and the sun come up, dead, despite the ships packed NE of those old-time pirato so as a suspected Imperial spy now wrangling over
fiery, a doom and an abomina- in the harbour and the wharf Djibouti..
tion
loaded with a jumbled variety of a man whom Europeans of that on behalf of the Chinese Govern The last independent African
ment. That he was especially "the day nicknamed goods, from foodstuffs to road
loyal to the Manchu cause is kingdom disappeared when Italy
cutter in allusion to the fact shown by the preferential treat Then the interminable waste material.
that he had once annexed Abyssinia. Now there's of sand all round seemed a fit-
naively ex- nothing left to wrangle over butting background, it parched too, a little sultry bar, and five forbidden cove by saying that he
He wandered about, and found plained his presence in some ment accorded to him in later years, but that is another the other man's possessions, it also a victim of the relentless Europeans in the bar.
They had gone there to gather fuel," episode in his life. Why is Italy so anxious to sun; and life became cruel and had not had a proper meal for Ma-chow Wong, whose real Singularly enough, the pheno- obtain possession of this small, simplified, and there
He took them on name was Wong A-kei, was said menal prosperity of Ma-chow arid French Colony, which luxuriance, no rich, tangled board his ship and fed them. to have been born in the San-on Wong lasted for only
the wheel of breeds nothing but goats, grows jungle, no fertility even
They were enormously grateful. district of Kwangtung about the years, and then any- nothing but a small quantity of where; only heat and glare and
year 1822. Practically nothing fortune suddenly ceased to turn Looking at the Red Sea and is known of his early life, but any longer in his favour. gum?
its little sleepy ports, which it is thought that his residence. Ignominy, too, was to be his might be uninhabited for all the in Hongkong began about the lot, and it all come about activity they show during most time this Colony became a Bri- through the accidental arrest of of the day, thinking of that tish possession.
young American, who was parched, deserted earth, the We do know, however, that inter proven to be none other
marvels that here by the year 1845 when he was than traveller
Ell Boggs, the pirate. should be the first stage in a 23 years of age, he had already This man Was in due course conflict that has already shaken become acquainted with Mr. D. convicted of his crimes, and the whole European system.
R. Caldwell, then Chinese Inter-while awaiting deportation to preter, who was to serve as his America, in the course of a patron and confidential adviser conversation with his gaolers, for many years.
he related a strange tale of how he had seen the ostensibly res- pectable Chinese merchant Ma- it sticky, unsavoury to breathe, ment, set out to make an obscure YOUNG Wong was
in every No, that is not the reason. It is not uncommon, in such cir- villago famous by putting it!
chow Wong on previous piratical It has a harbour, Djibouti. It
way a man of parts, and by forays, and how he (Wong) had which has a railway terminal (the cumstances, for a liner to stop, about that the village had un- the time that he was twenty directed the operations
animously voted the world to be seven was well established as a led to the capture of a certain ofher end of which is at Addis turn round, and let the following flat. Their project was a com-Hongkong merchant. It is like vessel and the seizure of her Ababa, capital of Italy's newest wind blow through it for half plete success. Charabanes wise possible that he had already cargo of sugar, and the murder
brought parties of visitors to embarked upon his piratical of many of her Colony) also Djibouti. Most an hour so as to get an airing.
crew. Such Important of all, it has a city
On shore, no such devices are lines and in music-hall
the village, it figured in head- career, but in those days he was statements as these were at first songs, but a small-fry corsair, and it regarded as highly improbable, which, if fortified, will become possible. Italian and French even in the proceedings of Par- was not until the next decade but on being further investiga to the Suez Canal and Red Sea soldiers packed in Massawa and lament,
that he managed to blossom, ted, the truth was elicited: and what Gibraltar has become Djibouti just have to endure,
forth as the most feared buc- Mn-chow Wong was brought to
It is in the same way that cancer along the South China under arrest. In the Mediterranean-also languidly watching the arrival
connection the Eritrea-Somaliland coast Djibouti.
of more ships and waiting with became
const. He was fortunate, too, with the case, Mr. Charles May, famous. Italian Somaliland, which has tepid water to drink and food shouted it, and children played nithough he was arrested in 1847 and Mr. A. L. Ins; the Gover Newsboys in his dealings with the law, and the Superintendent of Police, mostly shipped from Europe to at launching attacks from it; it on a auspicion of fraud in con-nor of Victoria Gaol issued the eat,
figured in the writings and nection with some merchandise following amazing summary of speeches of statesmen. Yet it purchased by his shop, he was the affair: is now what it was before--the speedily released. It is to ha edge of a narrow sea where heat suspected. as some have hinted, Flying over such places, it seems to get canalised, dry and that his friend, Mr. Caldwell had seems extraordinary that they unprofitable, a sea dividing the a great deal to do with his dia- support life at all. You sed civilisation of Europe from the charge from official custody; for France holds, In Djibouti, nothing but desolation, an occa- civilisation of Asin, and partak- it is certain that by this time. the key that can close the door |sional shadow where a few trees ing of neither, with the wild- they had become "blood tiro- to Abyssinia. Italy wants that are, a cluster of houses by the ness of Africa on one side and thers" by adoption, and Wong key.
aca coast.
an immenso desert on the other. had further scaled their intimacy
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It is waterles3 save along the gouthern frontier, where lies British Somaliland. It is 8 chaotic mass of volcanic rocks, destitute of vegetation and pre- scene of senting in places a weird desolation.
Italy cannot possibly want French Somaliland and thren- ten even to go to war to get it -for its resources9 colonisation purposes.
ог
for
a conatline of 1,200 miles, has no harbour, no railway, no port which can be turned into a fortl fled naval base. Eritrea has a port-Massawa-but between it and the hinterland lics à chain of almost unsurmountable moun-
taina.
Even passengers in luxurious- ly equipped liners, with ice and fans and nothing to do but toll on deck, find the Red Sea intoler- able when there is a following wind.
To add to everything else a Kipling has a story about sort of saltiness in the air makes three men who, as an experi-
*
4
"Mn-chow Wong has been apprehended and his house searched, the books and papers being seized, amongst the Infter are some napers, in Mr. Callwall's writing, showing that he had taken a direct interest in the business of
(Continued on Page 10.3
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