1938-12-29 — Page 6

THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1938.

INHOSPITABLE

SEA

GRIN AND BEAR IT

By Lichty

GOOD!

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It's Stout – It's Milk Stout

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MACKISON'S — with i

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THE ORIGINAL AND GENUINE MILK STOUT Sole Agents:-A. S. WATSON & CO, LTD.

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Lot's all join in the Chorus-With Tommy Handley and His Pals

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These Foolish Things Soloction-London Palladium Orchestra C3032

Folk Danco. Draper's Maggot: The Hole in the Wall

B8807

Here Comes the Band. March Medley-H, M. Coldstream Guards

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Moses—Fats Waller on the Organ

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Modloy-New Mayfair Orchestra

BD600

Puszta: The Wind has told me a story-R, Foort-Organ

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Woodcutters' Song-Comedy Harmonists D8614

She was, sho was, sho was: Just for fun-Max Miller

When you dream about Hawaii-G, Fitzgerald

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FACTS

FOR THE 10 u.P. MOTORIST

The Vauxhall 10-four in the most economi- cal Ten in the world; did 438 mpg. in a recent ILA.C. Trial,

Vauxhall

Finlinblity is unquestioned-a 10-four covered 7,275 miles in the Monte Carlo Rally, without towing a mark.

Tine Vauxhal) 10-Tour has independent Springing, Hydraulic Braken, Controlled Synchronesh," All-Steel Construction.

TRY BEFORE YOU BUY

May we demonstrate Vaurhal's fin performance and petrol economut

Stubbs Rd.

T

the quay at Djibouti

"A steamer alongside HERE are few less It seems quite strange, land- HONGKONG HOTEL

hospitable places in ing, to find men, black and thick GARAGE

featured and impassive-looking, the world than the

clustering round the place, and Tol. 27778-9.Red Sea and its coasts, even to realise that somehow or other in the winter, let alone in they manage to extract from midsummer. Through this such barren surroundings the inhospitable sea Italian and wherewithal to keep alive, |French troops would pour The Red Sea ports-Port Su-

Vauxhall

TRY ALSO THE 12 H.P. into Djibouti, seaport

The

of

Cope, 1114 ky United Tradere Kamasain, Tau

"Eat at the Captain's table? I should say nol-we 'ain't used to cating with the help!"

dan. Massava, Assab, Djibouti, T. Paul Gregory Tell of

very

French Somaliland, and Berbera, Aden-all look Massawa, se aport of much alike passing by them-a Eritrea, if it comes to

sea-front, a row of palm trees,

Hongkong Telegraph. show-down between the two of what is called civilisation Hongkong's Most

Wyndham St., Hongkong 'Phone 26615 December 29, 1938

Black Man's Continent

THE DEY OF ALGIERS hit the French Consul on the head with his fly-swatter.

They had been arguing (it was 1832) over a little matter connected with a bill for grain, and the conversation had be- come heated,

There was

African coast began.

That fly-swatter ought to rank. with the Serajevo bullet.

countries.

white houses, little encampments

existing precariously on the edge of desolation.

Famous Pirate

The heat is a torment, the very breeze scorches, like the hot air

The European officials who barbers blow on to your heir to come on board have a white, dry off a shampoo. You seem to tired look. Their faces bear the NOTHING is more dreaded by by presenting his sister in

peaceful mariners than the narriage to him. breathe in dust, hopelessness, so marks of much boredom endur- AN

The Needless to say that by the that the back of the mouth is ed. It is not difficult to imagine cry of "Pirates ahoy!"

what their lives are like, for life utterance of these words chills advent of the 'fifties, Wong was everlastingly dry. The sun

for a European in the East does the heart, and the mind recalls securely ensconced in his position beats down with a relentless,

dread not vary much as between one with

half-forgotten as a local buccaneer. His fleet dazzling monotony, and you have small station and another. episodes in the history of the of swift, piratical lorchas; man- [not even the satisfaction of

sra: memories of buccaneering ned by trusty crews ensured for Nor does it vary much as be-raids, of surprises in the dark, him a steady stream of lost, so knowing that nightfall will bring tween one European and another. the pillaging of ships, the that his warehouse on the Praya relief.

Your Frenchman or Italian may slaughter of captains and crews,was always ful. Not even Jean look rather more soiled

and and stories of passengers being Lafitte, the most successful creased than your Englishman, kidnapped and held for ransom. pirate of the Louisiana coast, be more inclined to sit in pyja-

I have known such heat in

*

415

+

For night, too, is hot, sullenly, heavily hot, and the stars seem

Nowadays, of course, this cry was more fortunate than ho; for a diplomatic in-beady, like eyes in a fat, perspir- mas in the evenings, have a more is seldom heard; for piracy is his shop in Queen's Road pro- cident, a blockade of Algiers,ing face. Flica settle languidly indolent, frankly perspiring, practically an occurrence of the vided the most effective cloak and a shot was fired. A French on features too languid to twitch frankly homesick, forlorn air. past. Yet some seventy or for the concealment of his real Expeditionary Force landed, and them away and fans just stir up But for all there is at the same eighty years ago, when the activities. What is more, the the conquest of this part of the the sultriness. Trying to think round of sunset drinks, the same waters around this Colony, were infinite variety, and the remark- monotonous hospitality, a sense the rendezvous for blood-ably low prices of his goods, is liko trying to drive a car

of being transplanted in an un- thirsty a lot of fierce sea-rovers proved unusually attractive, and through fog.

congenial, unfruitful soil.

as could be found anywhere. it under such circumstances the must have been heard with business of Wong and Co. It started one of the most Upper Egypt when the tempera-

despairing frequency. That was Hourished. drama-packed incidents of the ture was 116 deg. in the shade,

an era of piratical coups, carried Even the recent Abyssinian out by well-organised gangs, history of the world-the carve-and when, waking up at day- War would not revive these under the leadership of able and

the roof of a house sleepy, unappetising regions. An ruthless men, among European nations,

where I slept, I looked over the Englishman who went to Massa- It has a very special interest desert, seeing the grey dawn like to me how the place still seemed wa during the conflict described to-day, because France and Italy

a threat and the sun come up, dead, despite the ships packed wrangling

fiery, a doom and an abomina- in the harbour and the wharf tion

loaded with a jumbled variety of goods, from foodstuffs to road Then the interminable waste material. of sand all round seemed a fit-

He wandered about, and found ting background, it parched too, a little sultry bar, and five it also a victim of the relentless Europeans in the bar. They had gone there "to gather fuel." Singularly enough, the pheno

Messrs. S. MOUTRIE & Co., Ltd. up of the continent of Africa break on

YORK BUILDING

SATURDAY

Tol. 20527.

AT

THE

CHATER ROAD.

KING'S

GRAND NEW YEAR ATTRACTION

ONE WOMAN WHO

The thrill og drená of a mondat

whose courage cartled her beyond

de finaciar inte strange våressursi

Sono las de la se down be

Come True Badaku, kuru Bev

GAPY CLIAUTKIMU

Dared!

VESA model van

are

gum?

now

over

sun; and life became cruel and had not had a proper meal for simplified, and there

five days. He took them on

sand.

<

was no

It is waterless save along the southern frontier, where lies: British Somaliland. It is

Even passengers in luxurious- chaotic mass of volcanic rocks, destitute of vegetation and prely equipped liners, with ice and senting in places a acene of fans and nothing to do but loll weird desolation.

on deck, find the Red Sea intoler- Italy cannot possibly wantable when there is a following French Somaliland-and threa-wind.

*

ten even to go to war to get it To add to everything else a Kipling has a story about

-for

its resources colonisation purposes.

or

for

+

L

IN the meantime, he had become known throughout the Co- lony not only as a prosperous merchant and ship-owner, but ONE of these cid-time pirate also as a suspected Imperial spy chiefs was Ma-chow Wong, on behalf of the Chinese Govern- man whom Europeans of that ment. That he was especially day nicknamed

grassloyal to the Manchu cause ia cutter" in allusion to the fact shown by the preferential treat- that he had once naively ex- ment accorded to him in later plained his presence in some years, but that is another forbidden cove by saying that he episode in his life.

the

Ma-chow Wong, whose real

*

2

Djibouti.

The last independent African kingdom disappeared when Italy annexed Abyssinin. Now there's nothing left to wrangle over but the other man's possessions.

Why is Italy so anxious to obtain possession of this small,

name was Wong A-kel, was said menal prosperity of Ma-chow arid French

the wheel of Colony, which luxuriance, no rich, tangled board his ship and fed them. to have been born in the San-on Wong lasted for only seven

years, and then breeds nothing but goats, grows jungle, no fertility even any. They were enormously grateful. district of Kwangtung about the fortune suddenly ceased to turn

year 1822. Practically nothing nothing but a small quantity of where; only heat and glare and Looking at the Red Sea and is known of his early life, but any longer in his favour.

Ignominy, too, was to be his its little sleepy ports, which it is thought that his residence

about might be uninhabited for all the in Hongkong began about the lot, and it all came activity they show during most time this Colony hecame a Bri- through the accidental arrest of a young American, who was of the day, thinking of that tish possession.

none other parched, deserted earth, the We do know, however, that Inter proven to be

marvels that here by the year 1846 when he was than Eli Boggs, the pirate. traveller

was in due course should be the first stage in a 23 years of age, he had already This man conflict that has already shaken become acquainted with Mr. D. convicted of his

crimes, and the whole European system.

R. Caldwell, then Chinese Inter-while awaiting deportation to of a proter, who was to serve as his America, in the course patron and confidential adviser conversation with his gaolers, for many years.

he related a strange tale of how he had seen the ostensibly res- sort of saltiness in the air makes three men who, as an experi-

pectable Chinese merchant Ma- chow Wong on previous piratical it sticky, unsavoury to breathe. ment, set out to make an obscure

in every forays, and how he (Wong) had It is not uncommon, in such cir- about that the village had un- the time that he was twenty-led to the capture of a certain

village famous by putting it YOUNG Wong was

way a man of parts, and by directed the operations

which cumstances, for a liner to stop, animously voted the world to be seven was well established as a vessel and the other end of which is at Addis turn round, and let the following flat. Their project was a com- Hongkong merchant. It is like cargo of sugar, and the murder

success. Charabancs wise possible that he had already of many of her Ababa, capital of Italy's newest wind blow through it for half plete

crew. Such brought parties of visitors to embarked upon his piratical statements as these were at first Colony) also Djibouti. Most an hour so as to get an airing,

the village, it figured in head- carcer, but in those days he was regarded as highly improbable, important of all, it has a city On shore, no such devices are lines and in music-hall songs, but a small-fry corsair, and it but on being further investiga which, if fortified, will become possible. Italian and French even in the proceedings of Par-was not until the next decade ted, the truth was elicited; and to the Suez Canal and Red Sea soldiers packed in Massawa and liament.

that he managed to blossom Ma-chow Wong жая brought what Gibraltar has become Djibouti just have to endure,

under arrest. In connection It is in the same way that forth as the most feared buc-

cancer along the South China with the case, Mr. Charles May, the Mediterranean-also languidly watching the arrival the Eritrea-Somaliland coast

const. Ho-was fortunate, too, Djibouti.

Italian Somaliland, which has tepid water to drink and food shouted it, and children played although he was arrested in 1847 and Mr. A. L. Inglis; the Gover a coastline of 1,200 miles, has mostly shipped from Europe to at launching attacks from it; it on a suspicion of fraud in con-nor of Victoria Gaol Issued the

figured in the writings and nection with some morchandise

following amazing summary of no harbour, no railway, no porteat,

the affair: speeches of statesmen. Yet it purchased by his shop, he was which can be turned into a forti-

is now what it was before the speedily released. It is to ho fied naval base. Eritrea has a

edge of a narrow sca where heat suspected, as some have hinted, port-Massawa-but between It and the hinterland lies a chafi Flying over such places, it seems to get canalised, dry and that his friend, Mr. Caldwell had of almost unsurmountable moun. scoms extraordinary that they unprofitable, a sea dividing the a great deal to do with his dis- taina.

support life at all. You seo civilisation of Europe from the charge from official custody; for nothing but desolation, an occa- civilisation of Asia, and partak it is certain that by this time, "blood bro- slonal shadow where a few trees ing of neither, with the wild- they had become are, a cluster of houses by the ness of Africa on one side and thers" by adoption, and Wong sca const.

an immense desort on the other, had further sealed their intimacy

No, that is not the reason.

Pumieni

It has a harbour, Djibouti. It

has

Alexander

DRUMS

WE GEDETOUS TICHETED400

SALU NATNOHO MASSEY DESMONI TESTER-RODER LIV

VALIDIS HORSON

Count the "TELEGRAPHS"

everywhere

to

a railway terminal (the

France holds, in Djibouti, the key that can close the door to Abyssinia. Italy wants that key.

seizure of her

of more ships and waiting with becamo famous. Newsboys in his dealings with the law, and the Superintendent of

Police,

"Ma-chow Wong has been apprehended and his house scarched, the books and papers being seized, amongst the latter are some papers in Mr. Caldwell's writing, showing that he had, taken a dircot interest in the business of

(Continued on Page 5.)