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HONGKONG,
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
Among the patients who died from plague this week was, we are sorry to say, Inspector Moffatt, an official of the Sanitary Board. The disease, however, shows signs of abatement, as during the week there were only twenty-nine cases, bringing the total for the year up to 1082. One or two cases of interest have been heard at the Supreme Court, the principal one being an opium appeal, which was dismissed. On Saturday the. Rifle Brigade Regatta was held. A very unusual amount of excitement was occasioned in the harbour last Monday owing to a cargo boat containing twelve hun- dred cases of kerosine catching fire. Three lives were lost.
The old Opossum, which for many years past has been used as the mooring vessel of Her Majesty's Navy, is advertised for sale.
Rain having fallen in sufficient quantity to replenish the reservoirs, the constant system of water supply was restored on the 15th June
There were 3 cases of plague on the 9th June, 5 on the 10th, on the 11th, 1 on the 12th, 2 on the 13th, 3 on the 14th, 5 on the 15th, and 4 on the 16th.
A chair coolie in the employ of Mr. C. W. Spriggs, 3, Morrison Hill, was on the 9th June fined $10 or a month's imprisonment for refus- ing to obey orders.
The stamp revenue last month amounted to $24,360, being an increase of $6,397 on the amount collected in the corresponding month of last year.
The maximum temperature last month was 90.5, on the 31st, and the minimum 66.6, on the 8th, the mean for the month being 76. The rainfall amounted to 1.15 inches.
The Hon. Treasurer of the Alice Memorial and Nethersole Hospitals begs to acknowlege with thanks the following donation to the funds of the hospitals :-
Hongkong and Kowloon Wharf
and Godown Co., Limited 850 Right Rev. Bishop Burdon, D.D. $25 Ip Chuk Kai...
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The second engineer of the Martha was again brought up at the Police Court on the 10th June charged with shooting two coolies. The case was again remanded for a week in order to permit of the attendance of witnesses from the
ship.
Chinaman who had intended going to Honoluln by the Doric on Tuesday, having obtained a ticket for that purpose, by mistake
A couple of Chinamen were seen wandering inside the forts at Tsimstatsui on Monday and the sentry gave chase and caught one of them. At the Police Court on Tuesday the prisoner was fined $50 or two months' hard labour.
Captain Sachse, manager of the kerosine tanks at Kowloon, failed to appear at the Police Court on Tuesday in answer to a summons charging him with dumping refuse on the fore- shore and the Magistrate ordered a warrant to be issued against him. The defendant was arrested and brought up at the Police Court on the 10th June when he was fined $30.
We learn from the General Managers of Olivers Freehold Mines and the New Balmoral Gold Mining Company that an offer to purchase the properties of the two Companies by the Anglo-Australian Company. London, has been accepted. The offer is subject to the mines being favourably reported on by the expert of the Anglo-Australian Company.
On the 15th June Mr. J. H. Prosser sold by auction a piece of Crown land at the South of Kennedy Road. It is Inland lot No. 1,379 and contains 35,690 square feet. The annual rental is $268 and the upset price was $5,354. There was only one bidder, the lot being knocked down to Mr. A. Shelton Hooper, who was acting on behalf of the Hongkong Land Investment and Agency Company, Limited, for $5.374. One condition of the sale is that only European houses can be erected on the site.
The Bath-house Committee of the Victoria Recreation Club decided to accede to the wishes of the members expressed at the annual meeting for a bamboo fencing to be fixed round the bath. This shield is now almost completed and in a day or two members will be able to indulge in a swim without running the risk of being clinched by a jelly fish or being compelled to swallow tasty morsels such as decomposed cab- bage, unhealthy looking corn cobs, and floating wreckage and dirt of "named varieties."
The question of the effect of the new duties on Hongkong's sugar trade with Japan is thus discussed by the Hyogo News :-"Hongkong appears to have very good grounds for disap. pointment but practically none for actual com- plaint in regard to the tariffs on sugars agreed to by England with Japan. To have met the required, in our humble opinion, the introduc views now so clearly enunciated would have
sistently adhered to in the convention. tion of exceptions to a principle that is con- such exceptions could not fairly have been And
made in their case alone. The acquisition of
[June 18, 1896.
The following cutting from a home paper may amuse and edify our readers: A letter has been received by a resident in Exeter from a friend at Hongkong, dated 9th April, of which the following is an extract:-"We have had the pleasure of capturing a Russian gunboat, with officers on board, taking sketches of our forts. They were taken before the Governor and fined, and their books forfeited. They were again captured for a similar offence at Shanghai. This place is infested with foreign war ships, who dare not fire for fear of exploding the mines under them.'
33.
At the Police Court on the 9th June before Hon. Commander W. C. H. Hastings, Chung Hoi, a sub-contractor, was charged with obtaining $2 from Ng Tsz by menaces. The complainant is one of the masters of a furniture shop at 103, Hollywood Road, and the work of concreting the kitchen has been carried on for some days by order of the Sanitary Boord. The defendant was seen by the prosecutor to go into the kitchen on several occasions to supervise the work, and on Friday last he told complainant. that if he was not paid $2 the cooking stove would have to consult his partners and de- would be pulled down. Complainant said he
fendant, called later on when he was paid $2. He was sent to gaol for four months with hard
labour.
Limited, we gather that there is some hitch in With reference to the Raub Gold Mining Co.,
the arrangements for the installation of an electric plant with dynamos worked by motive power. A correspondent, writing to the Straits Times on various grievances in the Native States and the probability of their redress under Mr. Swetten- ham as Resident General, says: "We have the Raub Company-an undoubtedly honest, genuine mining enterprise-smarting under the delay to allow it to use the waste water of a of power." Thereupon the editor, after re- river for the purposes of electrical transmission ferring to the other grievances, remarks:- "The difficulties of the Raub Company belong, perhaps, to a different category, inasmuch as we believe that nothing has been settled there. It may, therefore, be that Mr. Swettenham may, in the case of Raub, have in himself power and authority to allow the Raub Company to
use,
for industrial purposes, river water that is doubt, because it is no secret that the Governor at present running to waste. Even that we is supposed to have half committed himself to allowed to use that waste water, unless the the view that the Raub Company will not be
went on board the Mount Lebanon on Monday. Formosa by Japan must in any event hare Company surrenders certain land rights which
It was dark at the time and he fell down a hatch and was killed.
dealt hardly with the trade in which Hong- Mr. A. Mitchell Innes, Financial Adviser to kong has so greatly profited. The building of refineries at Osaka and elsewhere is already a the Siamese Government, is a passenger on the P. & O. Arcadia which left London on 8th goods, Japan is determined to meet the home settled thing; in sugar, as in so many other May. On arriving at Singapore he will pro-demands with home products. Our sympathies ceed to Java to present himself to the King of Siam.-Siam Free Press.
The M. M. steamer Melbourne, which arrived on the 10th June from Marseilles with the French mail of the 8th May, was a little beyond her due date owing to detention at Djiboutil, and a slight derangement in her machinery
between Aden and Colombo.
On Tuesday morning the dead body of a Chinese cook was found in the harbour by the police. The deceased had been employed on the Gerard C. Tobey and he was missed on Monday morn ing. It is thought he fell overboard whilst working near the side of the vessel.
อ
these
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are with the Hongkong protestants; but our sense of right is certainly not outraged by that to which they object. Once the general right of tariff making was conceded, the limitations were properly kept as few as possible. Fortune has been rather hard upon Hongkong of late; yet almost simultaneously with this
last blow she has been granted what should prove
grand recompense. Will not merchants agree that the projected opening of the West River is, indeed, an event of first-class importance to British trade? Our contemporary, having referred at some length to the West River prospects and French competition via Tonkin, proceeds :-
:-" Hong- kong is primarily interested in these new pos- era of unparalleled prosperity It is right that no market should be given up uncontested, but we fear that it is too late to change the conditions that must in future rule the foreign importa- tion of sugar to Japan. The agreement does seem to assure a liberal bounty to Japanese traders; and this at a time when bounties are being disfavoured by at least three of the European Powers that have most persistently upheld the system. The working out of many changes that Treaty Revision entails is now being awaited in a state of complete uncer- tainty. It will be wise to exercise patience before weaknesses are any further disclosed; and we are by no means assured that the results will be as bad in this matter of the sugar trude as Hongkong anticipates.”
The master of a shop on the Praya was charged on the 9th June by Inspector Hore with erecting two cocklofts without the permissionsibilities; an of the Sanitary Board. The defendant's excuse should commence. was that he was a stranger to the colony and to the laws. He was fined $25, with the alter native of six weeks' imprisonment.
Mr. J. F. Schoenicke, Commissioner of Customs at Kiungchow, in his report for 1895,
All the foreign soap imported was made say's in and arrived from Hongkong; it is packed in handsome wooden boxes containing 72 cakes each, and is sold for the small price of $0.70 per box, or about I cent, per cake. The soap is good for all practical purposes and should there be an increasing demand in the future the Hongkong made article is sure to prevent its Western rival from ever gaining a footing here, unless the prices of the European product are reduced to a tenth of those ruling at present.
it at present possesses and uses.'
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MISCELLANEOUS,
On Wednesday last an accident which threatened The Chefoo Express of the 8th June says
to result in a serious fire occurred on board the While a Chinaman German steamer l'icciola. was attending to the lamps in the lamp-room, through his careless handling one exploded and the whole apartment was imme- diately enveloped in flames. Through the prompt action of the captain, who was on deck at the time (four o'clock in the morning), the flames were extinguished, but not before the native, to whose carelessness the accident was due, was badly 'injured. A blanket was quickly wrapped round him and he was conveyed to the hospital, but died on the day following.
The Hankow correspondent of the N. C. Daily News writes under date of 30th May The wet weather has been the cause of quite a mushroom crop of boundary stones in the locality of the French Consulate; and it is understood that our Gallio neighbours are making concessions to popular prejudice in the matter of meum and tuum, by relinquishing the attitude first adopted and expressing a willing- ness to entertain the question of purchase. This strikes the non-official mind as being a more reasonable basis of negotiation than "what's yours is mine, and what's mine's my own, so out you get!" It is a curious fact, and one which was duly commented on at the meet- ing, that the letter sent to the Race Club Stewards was not officially signed; although your own correspondent has sent you a version in which the signatory's official status appears in brackets.
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