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HISTORY

James Cantlie with the assistance of the London Missionary Society. One of the first students to graduate from the College, in 1892, was Sun Yat-sen, later to become the founder of the Chinese Republic.

In 1911 the College expanded into the University of Hong Kong. This development was made possible by the munificence of a Parsee citizen, Sir Hormusjee Mody, who presented the entire cost of the new University's main buildings. With Govern- ment support, and the aid of subsequent benefactors, the University has steadily developed traditions suited to its unique position as an English-speaking University in surroundings over- whelmingly Chinese. Its academic standards have remained high, particularly in medicine, and it has, from its earliest years, attracted students of many nationalities from south and south- east Asia as well as from Hong Kong.

The area available on Hong Kong Island for urban building was originally no more than a narrow strip of comparatively level ground along the foreshore. The original waterfront of Victoria ran, with a moderate foreshore, approximately along the line of Queen's Road. Hillside construction began in Stanley Street and Wellington Street, once a fashionable neighbourhood. As the nineteenth century proceeded, the tiers of houses rose gradually up the sides of the rock, fashion rising as well.

Reclamation of land from the sea began in the Colony's earliest days. By 1851 the waterfront had reached what is today Des Voeux Road Central, and was thereafter extended, in the face of much opposition from the principal commercial houses with foreshore sites, till it reached Connaught Road Central in 1904. This expansion, however, failed to keep pace with the increasing population. By 1870 the central part of Victoria, chiefly occupied by Chinese, was seriously overcrowded and insanitary. This was one of the factors that led the European community to climb even higher and develop the summits of the Peak as a residential area, a movement hastened from 1888 onwards, when Peak and city were linked by funicular railway.

A sanitary engineer, Osbert Chadwick, was sent out by the home government in 1882 to inquire into health conditions in Hong Kong, and as a result of his report a Sanitary Board was set up. Its measures to improve the noisome state of the city