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and grave danger which are bound to result and have resulted this year from an inadequate Water Supply, render it imperative that this Colony should face the necessity of increasing and improving the sources of supply as soon as the work can be taken in hand. What the total cost of such undertakings will be I am not at present in a position to state, but there is no doubt that they will be both difficult and costly. The matter is now, however, one of such gravity that questions of expense cannot be allowed to stand in the way of removing one of the most serious obstacles to the continued prosperity of the Colony.
I am glad to report that up to the present there have been far fewer cases of plague than had occurred at the corresponding date last year; but the numbers of the victims to the disease are now steadily though slowly increasing, and a new menace to the public health has appeared during the past few weeks in the form of Cholera. This disease, so far as it has affected residents in the Colony as distinct from arrivals from other ports, is in the opinion of the Medical experts chiefly attributable to the insanitary state of the waterless conduits and the careless use by the Chinese of fetid and stagnant water; for it is an unfortunate circumstance that the Chinese prefer as a rule to use unclean water that is near at hand than to go a long distance for a pail of clean water from a public tank.
I regret to say that a certain lack of resource and power of initiative on the part of the Director of Public Works (who is also Water Authority) has made it necessary for me to personally supervise the temporary arrangements which had to be adopted to supplement the almost exhausted