HONGKONG“
1003
嗎
purposes, three out of the five million dollars thus voted being raised by a local loan in the former year. In 1918 a sum of £550,000 was given for the same object, while the special war assessment produced $504,984 in 1917 and $1,052,760 in 1918, all of which was paid over to the Imperial authorities. At the end of 1924 the amount of the Con- solidated loan stood at £1,485,733, against which there was at credit of the Sinking Fund £467,272. Against the local loan of $3,000,000 there were the sums of $1,458,182 and £103,455 at credit of the Sinking Fund.
The rateable value of the whole Colony in 1924-25 was $22,147,951, showing an increase of 5'16 per cent. over the previous year. The rateable value of the Colony shows an increase of 55.02 per cent. in the past ten years.
The following is a statement of the revenue and expenditure of the Colony for the, eleven years 1913-24-
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1913... 1914... .:. 1915... ..!
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...
...
1916...
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1917...
1918...
1919...
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1920...
1921...
1922...
1923...
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1
Expenditure
Revenue $8,512,308
$8,658,012
...
11,007,273
10,756,225
11,786,106
15,149.267
13,833,387
11,079,915
... 15,058,105
14,090,828
...
...
18,665,248
16,252,172
...
16,524,975 ... 14,639,672
17,915,925
17,728,132
14,489,594 › 15,739,652
... 22,291,064
18,563,002
...
.. 24,783,762
21,571,904
+
23,903,937
26,120,852
1924 (estimated in October)
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DESCRIPTION
The island of Hongkong is about 11 miles long and from 2 to 5 miles broad; its circum- ference is about 27 miles. It consists of a broken ridge of lofty hills, with few valleys of any extent and scarcely any ground available for cultivation. The only valleys worthy of the name are those of Wong-nai Chung and Little Hongkong, both of which are remark- ably beautiful and well wooded, being in fact the only parts where any considerable arborescent vegetation was formerly to be found. The island is well watered by numerous streams, many of which are perennial. The city of Victoria and suburbs are supplied with water from the Pokfolum, Tytam, and Wong-nai Chung reservoirs. The first-named, constructed in 1866-69, has a storage capacity of sixty-eight million gallons, while the Tytam reservoir, constructed in 1883-88, and extended in 1896, as an area of about 29 acres and a storage capacity of about three hundred and ninety million gallons. From the Tytam reservoir the water is conveyed into town by means of a tunnel a mile and one-third in length and a conduit along the hillside some 400 feet above the sea level and nearly four miles in length, on which a fine road-called the Bowen Road-has been formed, which commands the most charming views of the city and the eastern district, and is a favourite resort of pedestrians. In many parts the conduit is carried over the ravines and rocks by ornamental stone bridges, one of which, above Wanchai, has twenty-three arches. The Wong-nei Chung reservoir, completed in 1899, has a capacity of twenty-seven million gallons. A bye- wash reservoir of about thirty million gallons capacity, situated immediately below the overflow of the Tytam reservoir, was completed in 1903, and a dam at Tytam Tuk to mpound 194 million gallons was completed in 1909. A further extension of these waterworks was completed in 1917 at a cost of about $2,400,000, making provision for mpounding 1,500 million gallons of water. This was expected to meet the needs of the Colony for another fifteen years but experience in dry seasons has shown that it is barely adequate for present requirements and a project has been started to dam the Shing Mun river and to tap practically the whole of the Eastern and Southern slopes of Tai Mo Shan. It includes 8,500 acres, or 13 square miles, of catchment area, a large proportion of which will be drained by means of catch-waters. The total catch- ment area on the Island is 2,650 acres and in Kowloon 849. It is proposed eventually to build nine storage reservoirs, varying in size from 55 million to 1,700 million gallons and having an aggregate capacity of 4,500 million gallons, of which 2,400 million gallons, or rather more than the whole storage capacity in the Island of Hongkong, will be stored in gravity, and the remainder will be in pumping reservoir. The water will be conveyed through the Kowloon hills by open conduit and two tunnels, the latter being 2,400 and 4,350 feet in length, respectively. The water will be brought down
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