ENG-1960 — Page 369

HISTORY

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twenty 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 a greater number of European traders than ever before to the Far East. This expansion was felt principally in Shanghai, which was commercially better situated than Hong Kong. Com- pared 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 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 has even since remained the vernacular name of San Francisco. When gold was discovered in Australia, not long afterwards, thousands more rushed to 'San Kam Shan' (New Golden Mountains), which has become the vernacular name for Sydney. In the year 1852 alone over 30,000 Chinese emigrants passed through Hong Kong. The problems of housing such vast numbers, and preventing abuses arising in connexion with migra- tion, presented severe problems to the Government of the day.

In 1850 the series of revolts known generally as the Taiping Rebellion broke out in Kwangsi Province, and gradually spread throughout Southern China. This was the first instance where unsettled conditions on the mainland have brought to Hong Kong thousands of Chinese refugees of every social class and occupation. By 1855 the population was estimated at 72,000 and by 1861, with the Taipings still not defeated, it had risen to 120,000. The constantly recurring situation in which the Colony, almost without warning, has had to provide accommodation, food, water and other facilities for thousands of new arrivals-people with no local attachments and whose period of stay may be no more