Hong Kong Annual Administration Reports, 1841-1941
PAPERS RELATING TO THE
hills assume somewhat of a greenish hue, like a decayed Stilton cheese; but the whity-brown or red streaked ridges, with the scattered masses of black rocks, give a most uninviting and desolate aspect to the island, which is unrelieved by the adjacent mainland, whose physical features are precisely similar to those of Hong Kong, its mountain tops and sides presenting the appearance of a negro streaked with leprosy.
GEOLOGY
There is no igneous formation in Hong Kong; the island partakes of the same geological character as the whole south coast of China, excepting that it seems of older formation. The structure may be briefly described as consisting of decomposed coarse granite, intermixed with strata of a red disintegrating sandstone, crumbling into a stiff, ferruginous-looking clay. Here and there huge boulder-stones, which gunpowder will not blast, may be found embedded in a stiff pudding earth, or they are strewed over the tops and sides of the mountains. Gneiss and felspar are found in fragments; that the granite is rotten and passing, like dead animal and vegetable substances, into a putrescent state, is evidenced from the crumbling of the apparently solid rock beneath the touch, and from the noisome vapour which it yields when the sun strikes fervidly on it after rain. On examining the sites of houses in Victoria, whose foundations were being excavated in the sides of the hills, the strata appeared like a richly prepared compost, emitting a fetid odour of the most sickening nature, and which at night must prove a deadly poison. This strata quickly absorbs any quantity of rain, which it returns to the surface in the nature of a pestiferous mineral gas.
The position of the town of Victoria, which may be likened to the bottom of a crater with a lake, prevents the dissipation of this gas, while the geological formation favours the retention of a mortific poison on the surface, to be occasionally called into deadly activity. There is no extent of marsh on the island capable of generating miasm; but the heavy rains are annually washing large portions of the mountains through deep ravines into the Bay, and thus continually exposing a fresh rotten surface to the sun's rays, and preserving a focus of disease which will finally become endemic. Vast quantities of the silt from the hills are being deposited along the shores of the harbour, which owing to this circumstance, and the rapid receding of the tides from this coast, is becoming shoaler every day. The greater extent of the bay has only four to five fathoms, and in the depth of the stream there is only six to seven fathoms. In no great interval of time the harbour of Hong Kong will be too shoal in many places for large vessels,
CLIMATE
It is difficult to convey by thermometrical registers an accurate idea of the climate of any place. The range of the thermometer will not indicate the pressure of the atmosphere; the barometer in or near the tropics is of little utility as an index; the hygrometer imperfectly shows the quantity of rain which is in solution; while the height of the land, its configuration, the nature of the soil, the extent and quality of the vegetation, the exposure to the sea, all influence what is comprised under the word climate. In some respects the whole coast of China partakes of the climatic characteristics of the opposite coasts of the American continent, particularly as regards the extremes of temperature and its depressing influence on mental or bodily exertion.
For six months in the year, April to September, the heat varies from 70 to 90° F. (see Monthly Thermometrical Register in Appendix), but occasionally during the other six months the heat is also very great, the thermometer having been known to stand at 80°F on Christmas Day. The island being on the verge of the tropics, is subject to almost the extremes of the torrid and temperate zones, even on the same day the range of mercury in the thermometer is very great, and the vicissitudes are exceedingly trying to the European constitution. But neither the range from heat to cold, nor the quantity of moisture in the atmosphere, will adequately convey an idea of the effects that this climate is capable of producing on the human frame.
During April, and part of May, when the sun is approaching rapidly from the Equator, there is a dry, burning heat, with a cloudless sky; but towards the end of May, and throughout June, as also during part of July, the rain descends in torrents, with a force and continuance such as I have never seen in India, Africa, Australasia, or any other part of the world. The clouds pour down one vast sheet of water, washing away hills and rocks, furrowing the island with deep ravines, and saturating the soft, porous, putrescent strata to the extent of many feet, with daily renewed moisture. In the intervals of rain, the vertical sun acts with an intense evaporating power, and a noxious steam or vapour rises from the fetid soil, yielding a gas of a most sickly and deleterious nature, exactly such as I experienced on the coast of Africa in 1824, when I was seized with an "earth fever," while in Her Majesty's service, from the effects of which I with great difficulty recovered, but of which most of my brother officers perished.
This morbific gas does not arise from vegetable or animal decomposition; there is none on the island of any extent; but decomposed mineral substances yield an aeriform poison, under some circumstances, of a more deadly nature than either of the other kingdoms of nature. This gas does not rise more than a few feet from the earth; it slowly mingles with the surrounding atmosphere, and when not causing immediate illness, produces a depressing effect on mind and body which undermines and destroys the strongest constitutions."
Military and naval men who have served in Africa and in India, feel the effects of the sun in Hong Kong in a manner never before experienced; even at Macao, only 40 miles
west
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