Hong Kong Annual Administration Reports, 1841-1941
REPORTS EXHIBITING THE PAST AND PRESENT
in China is a family roof, generally sheltering three and frequently four generations of human life, and how the amphibious occupants are sustained is a question which has long puzzled every foreign observer.
5. The Harbour Master's returns show that, exclusive of men-of-war, river steamers from Canton and Macao, and lorcas and junks from the various ports of China, 1,158 vessels, aggregating 626,536 tons, and belonging to 22 different nations, entered the harbour of Hong Kong during the past year.
The growing importance of our harbour as a point of departure for emigrants is also deserving of notice. During the past year 35 vessels, aggregating 36,830 tons, and carrying 10,217 emigrants, of whom 598 were females, left this for the following places:-
17 vessels for Australia.
San Francisco. Demerara.
This emigration, it will be observed, with the exception of the two cargoes of contract labourers for Demerara, is composed altogether of persons who pay their own passages and emigrate at their own expense, showing that when the emigrants are free agents the securities provided by the terms of the "Chinese Passengers' Act" are duly appreciated. The provisions of this Statute would have rendered it impossible for the emigration of kidnapped coolies for Cuba, which has recently attracted so much attention, to have been conducted in any vessel from this port, or in a British vessel from any port in China. This traffic, which has reflected so much disgrace on all connected with it, has therefore been carried on under foreign flags, and chiefly from the Chinese ports of Shanghai, Swatow, and Whampoa, and from the Portuguese settlement of Macao.
6. Towards the close of last year a scheme of family emigration which up to that time had been considered an impossibility was successfully inaugurated by the despatch of the "Whirlwind" for Demerara, containing 811 male and 64 female emigrants, under contract for five years' service in that colony. This vessel was shortly afterwards followed by five others, containing 1,317 males and 260 females, making a total of 1,628 male and 333 female contract emigrants shipped from this port for Demerara up to the close of the season in April last. It is, I think, scarcely possible to overrate the importance of the success of this experiment, when viewed in its probable bearing upon the future of the British West Indies. The government of the neighbouring provinces, the two Kwangs, has now legalized emigration, and established regulations for the management of it. Family emigration has been proved to be practicable; and when once the infamous coolie traffic shall have been suppressed, and the people acquire confidence in the promises made to them by the agents of colonies, which they will soon do, as favourable accounts have already been received from the first two batches sent to Demerara, I believe there will scarcely be any limit to the supply of labour which the West Indian planters may obtain from hence, of a class far more suited to their requirements than any they have hitherto obtained, for the Chinese coolie is stronger and hardier than the Indian, and more steady, industrious, and frugal than the indolent and eccentric negro.
7. This being a free port no means exist for obtaining precise information as to the growth of trade. But as our interests here are purely commercial, as every one, with the exception of public officers, is living either directly or indirectly upon the profits of trade, the increase of shipping and of population, the growth of both the foreign and native quarters of the town, and the enormous increase which has lately taken place in house rent and the value of land, all afford abundant evidence of the extension of commerce, and of the daily increasing importance of the place as an entrepôt for the trade of all nations.
8. As I only arrived in the colony towards the close of last year, I have not felt called upon to do more than merely glance at some of the most striking features presented in the returns now transmitted. Indeed Hong Kong is so totally unlike any other British dependency, and its position is in many respects so grotesquely anomalous, that I have felt some further experience of it to be absolutely essential before venturing upon any more detailed report of the condition and prospects of the colony.
His Grace the Duke of Newcastle,
&c.
&c.
&c.
I have, &c.
HERCULES G. R. ROBINSON,
Page 285
Page 286