RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522
238 

If the correspondent opposing the park scheme was not able to look very clearly into the future, a writer who adopted the pen-name "Atalanta" was a better seer. True, he had to wait until 1904 for his vision to become reality. He advocated the building of a tramway from east to west as a jubilee scheme. It would benefit every resident "male or female, child or adult, Chinese or Portuguese, Indian or European."

A tram would provide easy access to the proposed park. Without a convenient way of getting there, he too thought it would be useless. He was more interested, however, in the beneficial effect a tram would have both for health and recreation in general.

To the west were the cool airs of Pokfulam, “and those citizens who are not able to live at the Peak can be transported on hot summer evenings to the other side of the island, there to be refreshed by the western breezes and the health-giving and invigorating perfume of the fir trees.”

To the east was the beach at Shaukiwan, "where the little ones might get health and amusement by ‘paddling' while their parents may enjoy bathing or boating."

Easy access by tram to a good beach would be welcomed, so the writer claimed, by “hundreds and thousands of our humble English and Portuguese fellow residents who, by their narrow means, are denied the luxury of a country villa at the Gap or Kellett's Ridge."

Not all Portuguese were deprived of a summer villa, but few had them at the Peak. In the current issue of the Boletim do Instituto Luis de Camoes published in Macau, an article entitled "The Portuguese in Hongkong and China” by the late Jose Pedro Braga describes some of the villas built by members of the Portuguese community at Pokfulam and Kowloon.

The advocate for the tram took a different view of Chinese attitudes towards sport than the writer of the other letter. He said they and the Portuguese did not play cricket and tennis simply for want of space.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579
89

carriage roads and by the end of 1915 Pok Fu Lam, Aberdeen and Deep Water Bay were all accessible by car, to be followed by Repulse Bay in 1917, Shek O in 1923 and finally, in 1924, direct vehicle access to the Peak itself. After this date road construction on the Island was usually limited to road improvement, for instance to Kellett Road in 1928 and in the following year to Barker Road.

The timing of the development of much of the road network can be readily deduced from the names of streets named after Governors, military leaders and other prominent residents, for example on the Island Pottinger Street, Bonham Strand, and Kennedy, Hennessy, Chater, Sassoon and Stubbs Roads, and in Kowloon - Robinson (later renamed Nathan), Mody, Cameron and Ho Tung Roads, Kadoorie Avenue and Braga Circuit.

In Kowloon by 1887 a fairly comprehensive road system was in place south of Austin Road. The first 850 metres of the 30m-wide Robinson (Nathan) Road from Middle Road, some 1.1 kilometres of MacDonnell Road (later Canton Road), and Des Voeux Road (later Chatham Road) were all started. Many of the intersecting roads, for example Granville and Kimberley Roads, were already built. To the north of Austin Road the road network was concentrated in the southern Yau Ma Tei district with the 15m-wide 1.6km-long Station Road (later Shanghai Street) reaching Mong Kok Tsui. A small independent road system was already constructed in the Hung Hom area near the docks, for example Bulkeley Street and Gillies Avenue.

By the turn of the century there were some 35 kilometres of roads in Kowloon which included the first two original direct links into the newly-leased New Territories, that is those to Kowloon City and the Tong Mi area. In particular the road network in the new development at Yau Ma Tei was well under way and the Hung Hom road system had been enlarged and connected to the extension of Des Voeux (Chatham) Road. In order to relieve pressure on Victoria's densely built-up areas with their unhealthy conditions and at the same time to provide an easy access to facilitate opening up of the New Territories, the Harbour Master in 1901 proposed the construction of a cross-harbour bridge between Pottinger Street on the Island and Robinson (Nathan) Road, there being no engineering difficulty or "any practical obstruction or even inconvenience to shipping", the deck being 12 metres above high
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