PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
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COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON;
100
HONG ÂUNG.
Enel 9 in NA, 15.
126
REPORTS EXHIBITING THE PAST AND PRESENT
The science of chemistry has revealed to us the beautiful and dependent link that unites the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Obedience to the reciprocating laws of animal and vegetable life involves no abstruse submission to chemical science'; it is effected in the exercise of our refinement", Every man who plants and nurtures a tree or shrub, nurtures his own existence; he is unconsciously acting in obedience to the sanitary laws of nature; he is, in the exercise of a simple and refined pleasure, creating a safe rent for the notious residue of his own respira- tion, and the source of a life-invigorating gas. It is much to be regretted that the Govern ment, in apportioning the building sites in Victoria, did not encourage and enforce the forma- tion of gardens. There are many waste slopes and corners lying contiguous to buildings which have been expensive in their construction, that it would be well to plant and adorn, rather than to sell them for purposes which may render the neighbouring houses uninhabitable.
When an epidemic occurs, we are too apt to look for the source of it on the spot where the disease has reigned and there to apply our remedies. We overlook the fact that it may have originated from general and distant causes, It may be asserted as an axiom that the habits and houses of the poor are generally the sources of malaria. If this be true of any commu- nity, it is so of the humbler and native community of Hong Kong. In the quarters of their abodes, the houses are small, ill-ventilated, undrained, and thickly congregated. They are deficient in all the appliances of cleanliness. The social habits of the people, which it is diffi cult to control, add intensity to the external evils of their position. Though they had the Cloace of Rome to receive their filth, they would retain more than they reject. They, how- ever, uw water freely, and were the localities of their abode efficiently drained, this indis- criminate halit would be in many respects a safeguard. Fresh water, however, although abundant in the island, is a scarce and expusive luxury with the people. It is brought from a distance, and in dry weather obtained with difficulty, at an undue expense either of money or labour, and. I regret to add, from objectionable sources, such as the public drains, or stagnant receptacles of rain water. A few public wells or fountains would be easily constructed, and tend greatly to the comfort, cleanliness, and salubrity of the city.
The large drains which convey the torrents from the mountains to the sea, and serve also for reservoirs of filth, are open in the upper parts of the city. In consequence of their exces- sive declivity, the air, at a short distance from these openings, becomes so foul that it will not support combustion, an evidence of its deleterious qualities. As these drains empty them- selves into the sea below high-water mark, the tide rises into them, and forces the foul air through the upper openings. Every person who lives in the vicinity of these vents can testify to the practical truth of this assertion, from the disgusting odours which emanate at different periods of the day from the drains. The surrounding air thus becomes contaminated, and requires only the synthetical agency of electricity to elaborate it into a wide-spreading and deadly poison. This evil can be remslied by covering the drains beyond the sphere of habita- tion. It is a misfortune beyond the reach of any practical remedy, that the drains empty themselves into the "slack water of a tidal basin, by which their refuse is slowly and imper- fectly carried away.
The topography of Victoria affords no greater sources of malaria than those which ought to be the fountains of health-the public markets. They are wanting in every conceivable requisite of fitness, po-ition, cleanliness, construction, and internal regulation and discipline. The climate especially demands the reverse of all this. I observed early one morning, in one of the markets, persons in an advanced stage of disease lying over the pincipal butcher's stall. No consideration of "vest-d rights," or of those hundred other personal objections to public improvements, should retain the present markets a day beyond the powers of the promptest decision and action. The recent multiplication of markets has been a multiplication of erils. They are the centres of filth and its congenial companion vice.
It has been shown that the various and too common forms of venereal disease are peculiar. They are indeed too often the foundation of the worst diseases of the colony. Their social influence is obviously most hurtful, and it is most worthy of consideration whether some public remedial measures and system of inspretion could not be derised to mitigate the evil.
Lastly, it may be remarked that the experience of every year, and the truths which aœu- mulated facts elicit, convince me that the sanitary peculiariti's of the climate of Hong Kong have been misunderstood, and its evils excessively exaggerated, and that the latter are not entirely beyond the reach of a remedy,
WILLIAM MORRISON,
March 25, 1850.
(True Copy.)
S11,
(Signed)
Colonial Surgeon
(Signed)
W. CAINP,
Colonial Secretary.
Enclosure 9 in No. 15.
REPORT on the Three Chinese Schools receiving Government Aid.
Victoria, Hong Kong, March 8, 1850.
In reply to your letter of this date, requesting to be furnished with a report for the last year of the three Chinese schools receiving Goremment assistance, we have the honour to say: The schools have been visited as heretofore; that at Victoria, regularly, the others as oppor- tunity offered.
STATE OF HER MAJESTY'S COLONIAL POSSESSIONS.
127
TRONG COND
The total number of scholars now under instruction is 114; 71 of these being at Victoria, 17 at Stanley, and 26 st Aberdeen. The changes in the scholars have bʊen as follows:-
Number of scholars at the close of the Chinese year ending 1849
#
93
J
Number of the same scholars remaining in the schools at the close
of the Chinese year ending 1850 Changes.
62
31
Additions
21
114
Total
At the beginning of the present mouth, the teacher of the Stanley school having voluntarily resigned, we were enabled to appoint for that place a Christian teacher, highly recommended, who, it is hoped, may be able to conduet the school on principles somewhat sounder than those upon which his predecessors acted. The teachers of the other schools remain the same as before; they are those whom we found at first engaged în education, whom the inhabitants had themselves selected before the Government grant was made, and whom it was considered undesirable to remove, Under these circumstances, all the three teachers up to the present month having been Confucians, no interference in the system of instruction has been attempted, and hearing a few of the boys read, or seeing them write out of their own school-books, and asking them a few simple questions on the occasion of our visits, constitute all the supervision which we have been able to give. Mr. Stanton has occasionally distributed Christian books for their voluntary reading. The progress made by the scholars has, we believe, been equal to that in Chinese schools of the same class generally.
We beg again to record our conviction that the establishment of schools for the education of the Chinese population, and the exhibition otherwise of a desire to provide for their educa- tional wants, to which they themselves justly attach so great an importance, are most effectual means to conciliate the native inhabitants, and to render our Government popular among
them.
The villagers of Wongneichoong have requested that a school similar to that at Victoris may be opened in their neighbourhood, as there are a number of children there growing up without any education whatever, the parents being 100 poor to make it worth a schoolmaster's while to take up his residence among them. The village is in a very impoverished condition, owing to the land, by the cultivation of which the inhabitants subsisted, having been converted into a race- course, the money paid as compensation for this loss having been long ago expendxl. We beg to recommend their petition to the favourable consideration of his Excellency the Governor, that the small monthly sum, ten dollars, required for the establishment of a school, may, expedient, be granted.
We have, &c., (Signed)
(True copy.)
W. CAINE,
Colonial Secretary.
Enclosure 10 ju No.-15.
C. B. HILLIER,
V. J. STANTON, Committee for perintending -
Chinese Schools.
MEMORANDUM of the Number and Cargoes of Chinese Junks which have visited the Port of Victoria during the Year 1849.
Victoria, Hong Kong. Chinese Secretary's Office,
1th March, 1850.
if
Tue particulars of the following memorandum upon the juak trade at Victoria, are taken in part from notes drawn up monthly by Mr. Gutzlaff, Chinese Secretary, from the 1st January to the 31st August last. The matter of these was collected by a Chinese mes- senger of this office, a native of an eastern district of the Kwangtung or Canton province, and consequently the fittest person to obtain the information required from the junkies, most of whom, it will be seen, are from the same neigbourhood as himself. He has been in the habit of making a daily report of the junks or boats which arrive here, and of the nature of their cargoes; and this, since the departure of Mr. Gutzlaff in September, has been entered each day in a journal-sheet, which has furnished the data for such parts of this memorandum as are not derived from Mr. GutzlaffTMs notes.
The Chinese Secretary's Office possesses no means of ascertaining what mumber of junks put into Stanley, Aberdeen-where there are always several lying-or" any harbour of this colony except Victoria; or of finding out what may be the value or amount of the native cargoes brought by junks to Victoria; or what portion of such cargoes may be there sold; or what goods thence exported in native vessels.
These were divided by Mr. Gutzlaff into 4 classes :—1. Fast boats; 2. Marine; 3. Sult; 4. Stone boats.
1. Fast boats;This term does not appear to mean such bosts as are commonly koown by this designation, viz., those employed by passengers between Hong Kong, Macao, and Canton, but those which bring supplies to the colonial markets.
Their number in January and February is stated to have been considerable. In March and
Esel. 10 in No. 15.
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