force, resulting in widespread damage and loss of life. Sixteen such disasters have occurred in the last fifty-five years. Spells of bad weather with copious rain and strong winds are, however, experienced several times in each summer, owing to the passage of typhoons at varying distances from the Colony.
The mean monthly temperature ranges from 59°F in February to 82°F in July, the average for the year being 72°F. The temperature very rarely rises above 95°F or falls below 40°F. In spring and summer the relative humidity of the atmosphere is persistently high, at times exceeding 95%, while in early winter it occasionally falls as low as 20%. The mean monthly duration of sunshine ranges from 94 hours in March to 217 hours in October. The mean annual rainfall is 84.26 inches.
The mean temperature for 1938 was 72.8°F, which is 0.9°F above normal. April and June were both exceptionally sunny, the total duration of sunshine being the highest recorded in each of these months. The year was the driest since 1895: the total rainfall amounting to only 55.35 inches, against a normal of 84.26 inches. No typhoon seriously affected the Colony during the year, and no gales occurred, although an unseasonably early typhoon on May 3rd-4th produced a gust of 63 m.p.h., which is the highest wind velocity ever recorded in May.
History.
Prior to 1841 the island, now known as Hong Kong, was inhabited by a few fishermen, stone-cutters and farmers, and provided a well-known hiding place for smugglers and pirates. In that year it was occupied by the British forces partly as a reprisal for the treatment of British merchants in Canton, and partly to provide a secure base from which trading might be continued with the merchants of South China.
Foreign intercourse with China dates from the sixteenth century when expeditions from the maritime states of Europe—Portugal, Spain, Holland and England—penetrated into Far Eastern waters in the hope of establishing a direct trade by sea with the Moluccas or Spice Islands. At the end of the century Queen Elizabeth herself addressed a letter to the Emperor of China. Though this letter was probably never delivered it marks the beginning of official support for a whole series of adventurous attempts to share in the trade of the Eastern countries.
At the beginning of the next century a monopoly of the East Indian trade was created in favour of "The Governor and merchants of London trading in the East Indies." An early trading-station at Bantam in Java soon led to the extension of the sphere of action to Japan and China, and it was off the coast of South China that the East India Company had to face a double opposition to its aims: the hostility of the Chinese authorities, and an intense rivalry with the Dutch merchants.
The Portuguese had already founded the settlement of Macao from Malacca. It was probably the existence of this European foothold that concentrated foreign attention on Canton. In 1681 the East India Company secured a house in Macao and a little later an approach was made to Canton itself. By 1715 a regular seasonal trade had been commenced with a shore-staff residing during the season in 'factories' in Canton, and, during the summer months, in the Company's premises in Macao. The French, Dutch and Americans were not long in following the Company's lead and, by the end of the eighteenth century, Englishmen trading on their own account were beginning to share the benefits of this precarious intercourse. It was into the hands of these newly arrived adventurers that the opium trade fell when, in 1800, the Company declined to carry opium in its ships owing to an Imperial edict forbidding the importation of opium into China. For some thirty years this state of affairs continued, during which the Chinese authorities, infuriated by the persistence of the illicit trade which they were unable to check, put increasingly arbitrary and irregular restrictions on the Company's legitimate activities.
Meanwhile two abortive attempts had been made to establish official relations with China—by Lord Macartney in 1793 and by Lord Amherst in 1816. The separate trends which British intercourse with China had hitherto taken, the activity