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buried among their own people where the ancestral worship and ceremonies may be performed by their descendants at their grave.
5. To any person who has studied the religion and customs of China, the force of this desire is at once apparent. Probably when a person is struck by plague he is too ill to think of flight, but the knowledge that, if they desired, they could return to Canton calmed the panic in the years following 1894, so that but three or four people in all embarked on the expense of removal under the precautionary regulation.
6. This year, when it became known that such removal would no longer be permitted, there was great uneasiness which has intensified day by day until at length, I am informed by various business men that a state of panic prevails that has seriously affected all the business of the port. Mr. Poate, the Manager of Messrs. Butterfield and Swire, informs me that of three thousand men who were working at the Taikoo Sugar works and the Quarry Bay Dock Reclamation but three hundred remain; among those who left being every Chinese head of department, while Mr. Ritchie, the Manager of the Peninsular and Oriental Company here, another member of the deputation from the Chamber of Commerce, stated that if the wharf coolies continue to go, all shipping will be gravely injured.
7. Lest there should be any mis-apprehension as to the attitude of the Chinese Government, the Viceroy of Canton requested by the despatch of which I enclose a copy, Shang lang *
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that the Chinese subjects living in Hong Kong, nine-tenths of whom are Cantonese, should be permitted, even if plague-stricken, to return.
* "see note attached"