ENG-1955 — Page 267

212

HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT

outside Hong Kong itself, particularly in China. Internally, the history is one of gradual material and social improvement, the expansion of the city by cutting into rock and by reclamation of land from the sea, the building of more reservoirs to provide for a mainly expanding population, and the provision of schools, hospitals and other forms of public service.

Hong Kong's first years as a Colony were almost chaotic. In 1841 alone, the new Chinese market quarter was burnt down twice, and nearly every roof on the island came off twice in typhoons. A mysterious disease, known as the Hong Kong fever, now believed to be malaria, decimated the population; and in 1843 the health situation was so bad that the Governor and everyone who could afford to do so took temporary refuge in Macau.

Confidence did not begin to grow until 1844, from which year the real development of the Colony as we know it to-day began. At the first census the population of the island did not exceed 3,650 villagers and fishermen, living in some 20 villages and hamlets, with about 2,000 fishermen living afloat. Chinese labourers, encouraged by prospects of work, began to come to the Colony, and by April 1844 the population reached 19,000.

From 1845 the first monthly mail service between Hong Kong and Europe was started. The increased security obtained for traders of all nationalities by the Treaty of Nanking, and, in particular, the comparative ease of acquiring land for offices, warehouses and homes in Hong Kong and the treaty ports, attracted to the Far East a greater number of European traders than ever before, leading to a tremendous increase in commerce. This expansion was felt principally in Shanghai, which was commercially better situated than Hong Kong. Compared with Shanghai's astonishing development as a western city, Hong Kong's early growth was unspectacular.

Shortly after its foundation, a great wave of emigration of Chinese labourers took place, mainly to the Straits Settlements, Thailand and Java, the bulk of the emigrants travelling in European and American ships. Hong Kong was the chief port of emigration. Later, when news went round of the opening up of goldfields in California, there was a rush of Chinese to "Kam Shan" (the Golden Mountains), which