82
Sketches of China
FED.
readers in what year his sketchies were taken; though he has, and with good grace enough, told us of the qualifications and opportunities he had for their faithful execution. Having first alluded to the dif ficulty, to Europeans, of obtaining that full and accurate information which alone can afford data for our reasonings, or a clue to the ex- planation of the several anomalies-discovered by a certain political philosopher, and certainly calculated to puzzle us of the west,'- he then says, our two most effectual means of inquiry have been, a knowledge of the language, and the openings afforded by the royal missions to Peking. And he adds: “It was the good fortune of the writer of these sketches to be officially attached to an embassy from the court of London to the emperor of China: this was an event (see- ing that such English visits to Peking have been of the rarest occur- rence) worthy to form an era in any man's life, but to himself it derived an additional value from peculiar circumstances. At the early age of eighteen he had devoted himself to the investigation of all that could by any possibility be learned of that real terra incog- nita' to which the mission in question was destined; and about two years' close attention to the subject (including the language espe- cially) was followed by the altogether unsolicited boon-sufficiently prized by the favored few to whose lot it fell—of proceeding in per- son, under the high auspices and introduction of a public embassy, to read the sealed book.' Such were his qualifications and such his opportunities.
Once upon a time-and who has not heard of the time when a British embassy went to Peking, and having reached it forthwith came back again-a "squadron of two ships, two surveying vessels, and a brig-of-war, came to anchor, on the evening of the 10th of July, off Hongkong." Mark, the evening of the tenth of July. The omission of the year, in this instance, may however, possibly be an error of the press, or a mere oversight like that on page 86.
In a note he says, "the name Hongkong is a provincial corruption of Hung kiáng, the Red torrent,' from the color of the soil through which the stream flows previous to its fall over the cliff." Page 65. Somewhere we have heard the island called the "bloody stream;" but on native maps we do not find it written either "the red torrent," or "the bloody stream;" a small valley, opposite the tongue of land named Kowlung, is called hung hiúng lú, the red fra- grant furnace;' and a small bay on the west of the island is called 4 h Hiáng kiáng, in the local pronunciation Héungkóng, the
hagiant harbor
The name Hongkong is probably derived from