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September 5, 1904.]
Another large boulder in the same locality looks dangerous, and should be removed without delay, as further disaster is feared from it.
The scavengers were early at work on the Hill roads, and by eight o'clock numerous heaps of greenery torn from the trees and ferns by the violence of the wind were to be seen ready for removal. Several trees were uprooted in the Eastern district.
The kitchen of 39, Gage Street, collapsed dur- ing the typhoon, and caused great alarm among the inhabitants. Luckily they were all able to make their escape before the disaster, and no one was injured. In Bonham Road a house in course of erection near Breezy Point has suffered considerably, as it did in the previous gale, the position being a very breezy one indeed. A large number of houses in Kowloon, Hung. hom, and Yaumati had a severe shaking, and will probably fall in yet. Several minor col. lapses are reported from there
The race-course was so badly flooded by the rains that the gymkhana proposed for to-day has had to be postponed.
The most agreeable feature of the typhoon was undoubtedly the drop in the tempera ure from 85 degrees in the beginning of the week to 75 degrees yesterday.
The barometer, which was down to 29.15 at 8 p.m. on Thursday. had risen by 10 a.m yesterday to 29.49.
The report from the Observatory gives the rainfall to 10 a.m. yesterday as 4.85 inches.
29th August. FATALITY AT MACAO.
A private lester from Macao, received yester. day, states that the Portuguese port suffered seriously during the typhoon Numerous houses were wrecked, mostly hinese; but in one case a collapse caused the death of Mr. C. Castro, formerly employed in the Customs.
noon
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THE CHUBAN."
The P. & O. Chusan entered Hongkong Harbour at daylight on Saturday.
She had the English mail on board. 48 hours overdue. She left Singapore on the afternoon of the 20th inst.. experiencing sunny weather till leaving the Paracels astern. A fresh breeze then sprung up from the S.W.; the sky assumed an ominous inky appearance.
A little later-at on Tuesday--the barometer indicated stormy weather the wind increased. and fierce squalls, accompanied by blinding rain, were frequent. Wednesday morning showed the ship, by dead reckoning, some 100 miles S. W. of Gap Rock. A racing screw made it necessary to reduce the number of revolutions. so very little headway was made. On Thursday after. noon the wind jumped to the S.E.--continuing to blow strongly as before. Soundings were taken with a Lord Kelvin machine at short intervals. The weather showed signs of im. provement about midnight, the typhoon's centre having passed to the west. The wind, neverthe less, continued strong during the next day. Deck fittings were damaged by the seas sweeping the decks; skylights were broken; steampipe casing was washed away; a lifeboat was carried overboard out of its davits; and the saloon, main deck, and captain's cabin were washed out. The lowest reading of the glass was 29.25
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
it.
in
vain to heare another tug to tow us there. After trying in the anchor we slipped It then came on to blow; there was also a bit of Cooks fouled her propellers. The other tag swell on. The Robert sheered off. The Pathfinder and Robert Cooke people burnt joss paper in the wind to ward drifted into the fleet of junks. Chinese boat us off, but we went right in amongst them, taking the masts out of four. herself, settled down, broadside to the wind, on The Pathfinder, soft sand. Thus we lay all night, sea washing under our counter. The Robert Cooke was. among the junks, one of which was right ashore hard by. Friday morning the wind shifted and
At about three o'clock on floated off.
AMONG THE HONGKONG BEACHCOMBERS.
"
A HUMAN DOCUMENT
REVIEWED.
We
cameo
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He admits
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volently inclined and those who are stony hearted." found at least 20 men lying about in various "He took me to a place where I
in vile whisky." Our copyright beschcomber attitudes. Some were indulging in Rum, some has, you will observe, very correct views on him as to their mode of life. One had followed these Pernicious Drinks. The "20" instructed it for four years, and was Boss of the ̈show." They clubbed together to make sure that each role of genteel poverty. member was clad appropriately for the paying
M.A." We pressed our informant on this illiterate. Two of them are B.A.'s and one an 'Only a very few are
point, suggesting that vraisemblance would have been secured by reducing the number; but he stuck to his guns, and his three graduates. The day's proceeds of the gang are equally divided. Any members successful in regaining respectability and employment pays a percent- age on the first three months' earnings. It is always paid. The taking of the band that day were $102. "I was told that a well-to-do merchant in Hongkong never fails to pay the band $25 a month, and that he has done this tuously declined to have anything to do with for at least ten years." Our beachcomber vir.
ravenously hungry, refused to partake of the such underhand proceedings, and although food offered. Proceeding to relate other matters, he makes a remark that will strike our is stranger-"much more stranger," he puts readers as profoundly incisive. It is that life it--than fiction. of course.
There may be exceptions, others, and truth would appear to be
Some fictions are stranger than
him. stranger to-but we are not yet done with They complain that work should be given “to We come now to beachcomber politics. Chinese at a wage which would keep a Euro- the labour much more satisfactorily than our pean from the streets and who would perform
yellow-skinned brother
The European capitalist employs say 5 Chinamen at a wage averaging $1 a month each where one Euro- pean could do the work just as expeditiously
A week or two ago, coming in contact with a man who professed to be so “down on his luck' that he had plumbed the depths of beachcomber life in Hongkong, we commissioned him to retail for the benefit of the public his experi- ences. With the intelligence our subject showed, we had hoped for at least a from the lower-world of the colony, but instead. we have got nearly a dozen foolscap pares of the familiar whine of the mendacious and men- dicantial visitor so familiar to the doorsteps and entresols of Hongkong. The very word
beachcomber" suggests romance. because there is no coral beach, or silver sand, Perhaps or palmshaded shore here, we have no romantic beachcombers. So far as we learn from the “human document" now in our possession, wo have only loafing tramps; and even those without the charming i. souciance and fascina- tion of the genus that foots the King's Hichways at Home. Our own all-rights- reserved beachcomber cannot conceal a feeling of bitterness he entertains to those more favoured by fortune-a resentment we are quite convinced he had no occasion to feel. He came to Hongkong, he says "on speck" (sic), having read glowing accounts in Home papers of our splendid facilities for pushing. commercial and industrial people." He has not recognised the shortage of "pushfulness" that we noticed. so he decides there are no facilities. that he got a billet." but later not being a tr desman. I was litterally given the sack so as to admit of a more productive article being employ ed." Charming naivete! The spectacle of Chi- nese well-to-do while bea European "--was otherwise. seems to have convinced him that things were awry in the state of Hongkong. Still, to point a moral and adorn a tale, he mentions a man lying prone_faint with starva- tion. who was passed by a European with the remark "Oh! a beachcomber, drunk. whereas a Chinaman, like a good Samaritan, took him up and gave him a good square meal at a restaurant. The European, he says, had been without food for five days! His appetite must therefore have been noted at Wo Ying's in Wellington Street." where he is said to have broken fast. Our informant, after two months fruitless search for work, had himself reached the lowest strata of European life in the East," and he enlarges pathetically on his gaunt. hungry look, his drooping head," and his stage, tolerate charity. A square meal first, by faltering steps." He will not, even in this all means, but after that, a helping hand towards employment that will let him repay his indebted- ness. Otherwise, you would make him a pauper, and destroy his self-respect. Such," he says, "are the trend of my thoughts as I sit here in meal in 5 days, the price of which I am now a quiet corner having just partaken of the first earning by setting forth my recent and present experiences in this colony of Hongkong, days before he had helped down a pound of dry Five bread with questionable-looking water! douche under the first tap he saw. slept under a tree somewhere, and had a He
in misfortune (he had gone only four days A fellow On Thursday morning we were lying off his throat rather than beg. Strange beach- without food) confided that he would out Kowloon Dock, lines out, anchor down. The combers, these! Another was more like the Dock Co. thought we would be better in type we know. He is described as Typhoon Bay; they sent the Robert Cooke and 'haired one, who
a gray- "knows who
inches.
THE TYDEUS."
The 8.8. Tydeus, from Singapore on Saturday, reports that she had to considerably deviate from her course to avoid the typhoon's centre. On the 23rd inst., in Lat. 18.52 N. Lon. 111.50 E., she passed that round-topped buoy sighted by so many vessels.
THE "SHAWMUT."
The Shawmut is said to be leaking slightly. She is at present waiting her turn to go into No. 1 dock at Kowloon. She floated off from the reef on Friday, at the wind-shift. The anchor commenced to drag Wednesday night. when rocket distress-signals were fired.
THE PATHFINDER." The U.S. Coast Surrey 8.8. seems none the worse for her mishap. The Pathfinder accident is described as follows by a member of
the crew :-
LL
are
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and live on the $60. Thus in due British colony with a European community course Hongkong would become in reality a somewhat like that of Canada, Australia, and what it is worth, to His Excellency the Gover- New Zealand." We offer this suggestion, for nor. It is just possible he hasn't thought of such a simple solution. Just to make sure that his memory had not misled him. our beachcomber returned to the Deo, and after "the vile liquor" their money-making tricks. One was a con- had loosened their tongues, he learned more of fideuce trick for borrowing money, so stale that we need not repeat it. Nor, for the sake of our entente cordiale, dare we quote our acquain- tance's comments on the hoboes from Manila,” of whom he claims to have met many. pleasant to learn that
It is Brittain has a sturdy independent character,” those just out from and starve a fortnight before they will stoop to beg, being, we are assured, "too honest to beg and too jealous of the Empire's name and prestige." In deference to our beachcomber's wishes, who feared he would be mobbed for exposing the secrets of the gang," we have deferred publication of his memoirs. He is now catch his lustrous eye, we would soothe his away from the colony, but should these lines self respect by adding that, although his con- tribution is not quite what we wanted, we do not count the amount advanced for it as altogether wasted.
[N.B.-No more wanted at present, though.]
The question of the closing of the Poyang Lake to foreign gunboats is still interesting people at Kinkiang. The reason alleged by the Commandant of the Hakon forts in his request firing practice was the presence of rebels sad that H.M.S. Snipe should not enter it for
overt acts by the sight of a foreign vessel. The sach unruly persons, who might be incited to
objection by pleading the Admiral's orders, and German gunboat Vaterland overrode the same
lake, which has not apparently produced any ill has just returned from firing practice in the
the presence of rebels would seem a very good results. To the foreign "man in the street reason for taking the opportunity to impress the power of Western nations on the Celestial bene- mind.-N.-C, Daily News.
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