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return to their homes, and thus be saved from a fate to them
the burial on foreign soil, away
much more dreaded than death
from the graves of their kindred.
8. With their attitude in the matter I am in
entire sympathy. If Canton were free from plague the position would be changed; but Canton has suffered, and is suffering more severely than Hong-Kong from the epidemic, and the same story comes from every part of the two Kwongs and from the province of Fukien. By this regulation therefore in force up to 1900 the disease was not imported to a non-infected district but to a
place saturated with plague, and from which, rightly or wrongly,
there is in many minds a conviction that our now annual plague
is annually imported. But even if the district were free from
plague and international altruism induced this Government to
adopt the present prohibition, the direct result would be the
certain introduction of the disease, for the instant that a man
feels out of sorts now he goes to Canton at once if he can afford it; and it is more than probable that many hundreds already infected, but in whom no symptoms had yet developed, have
fled to Canton within the past three months. Putting aside the
facility with which they can go by land to Nam Hoi, it is impossible for the Police to watch the hundreds of junks that
enter and leave this great harbour every week. Although an attempt is made to prevent plague-stricken people from going to
Canton by the large steamers that ply by day and night, the
bodies of those who have managed to get on board and died on
the passage are almost daily found at Canton. On one boat six
bodies