Directory_and_Chronicle_1925 — Page 1086

HONGKONG

1007

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Sailors' Home, is a small brick Gothic erection with a spire. It has a stained glass window, presented in 1878. St. Stephen's Church, for Chinese, was built in 1892. lt is a neat building in red brick with white facings, with a tower and spire about 80 feet high, standing on the Pokfolum Road side of the Church Mission compound. Union Church, a rather pleasing edifice in the Italian style of architecture, with a spire, and containing accommodation for about 500 persons, formerly stood in Staunton Street, but was rebuilt in 1890, on the plan of the old building, on a new site above the Kennedy Road, together with a parsonage adjoining. This church possesses an organ, and the three rose windows are filled with stained glass. A Wesleyan chapel stands at the junction of Queen's Road and Kennedy Road; this was enlarged in 1904. The Roman Catholic Cathedral situated in Glenealy Ravine, near the Botanic Gardens, is a large structure in the Gothic style; it was opened for worship in 1888. A campanile tower with a small spire surmounting it was completed in 1904 to receive a new peal of five bells. St. Joseph's Church, in Garden Road, is a neat edifice erected in 1876 on the site of one destroyed by the great typhoon of 1874; St. Anthony's Church on the Bonham Road, near West Point, is an ugly structure, erected in 1892 by the munificence of a late Portuguese resident St. Francis' Church, at Wanchai, and the Church of the Sacred Heart, at West Point, are small and unattractive structures. The Jewish Synagogue was erected in 1901, and is situated on the northern side of Robinson Road. It is a plain but roomy edifice with two squat towers surmounted by spirets, The entire cost of the Church was borne by Mr. (afterwards Sir) Jacob Sassoon. There are two Mahomedan Mosques, one in Shelley Street and the other at Kowloon, the latter being for the accommodation of the men of the Indian Mahomedan regiments quartered on the peninsula. A Sikh temple was, in 1902, erected near the Wanchai Road approach to the Happy Valley. There are also several Protestant mission chapels. A Christian Science Church was built on Macdonnell Road in 1911. St. Joseph's College, a school for boys managed by the Christian Brothers (Roman Catholic), occupies a large and handsome building on a prominent site below Robinson Road, and also the premises on Kennedy Road formerly known as the Club Germania. The Italian Convent, in Caine Road, educates a large number of girls, and brings up many orphans gratuitously. The Asile de la Sainte Enfance, in Queen's Road East, is in the hands of French Sisters, who receive and train up numbers of Chinese foundlings. Other denominations likewise support charitable establishments, conspicuous among which are the Diocesan Home and Orphanage, the Baxter Vernacular School, the Victoria Female Home and Orphanage, &c. St. Paul's College, situated between Pedder's Hill and Glenealy Ravine, was erected in 1850, and was originally founded for the purpose of giving a theological training to young Chinese and others intended for the ministry of the Anglican Church, but is now ordinary school. A small chapel is attached. The college is the town residence of the Bishop of Victoria, who is its warden.

The Protestant, Roman Catholic, Parsee, Jewish, and Mahomedan Cemeteries occupy sites in Wong-nai Chung Valley and are kept in good order. The Protestant Cemetery is almost a rival to the Public Gardens, being charmingly situated and admirably laid out with fountain, flower beds, and ornamental shrubs. The principal Chinese cemetery is on the slopes of Mount Davis, near the Pokfolum Road, and is injudiciously crowded and dismally bare, but it is a Confucian maxim that "places of Į burial should not be made to resemble pleasure-gardens.'

An electric tramway runs through the City of Victoria from Belcher's Bay to East Point and Happy Valley, and thence on to the village of Shaukiwan, a total length of 94 miles. A cable tramway has since 1888 given access to the Peak and is worked with great success, both financially and otherwise. The City terminus of this interesting little line is at St. John's Place. Powers were obtained in 1908 for the making of another tramway to the Peak, starting from Battery Path and proceeding up the Glenealy Ravine to a point close to the terminus of the existing line, but owing to public opposition to two of the suggested routes the scheme was abandoned, the alternative routes, on which some tunnelling was necessary, proving too expensive. The construction of a line from Wanchai to Mt. Caroline, giving access building sites on the higher levels, has been promised for several years past by the Government but though a sum of money was voted for the purpose by the Legislative Council in 1919 the project has been shelved up to date on one pretext or another. A motor 'bus service to Repulse Bay is maintained by the Hongkong Hotel, and anothe motor 'bus service is run by private enterprise in Kowloon pending the provision o a tramway for which tenders were invited some time back.

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