ENG-1965 — Page 282

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Geography and Climate

THIS chapter, and those which follow on the history of the Colony and its system of government, present a background against which the detailed descriptions in other chapters of the Report may be viewed.

The Colony of Hong Kong is on the south-east coast of China, adjoining the province of Kwangtung. It is just inside the tropics, less than 100 miles south of the tropic of Cancer, and lies between latitudes 22°9′ and 22°37′N and longitudēs 113°52′ and 114°30′E. The twin cities of Victoria, on Hong Kong Island, and Kowloon, on the mainland, stand on either side of the harbour, and are about 90 miles south-east of Canton and 40 miles east of Portuguese Macau. The jet age has brought the Colony to within less than 24 hours of Britain, while the shortest air route across Eurasia between London and Hong Kong is 5,965 miles.

The total land area of the Colony is 398 square miles of which Hong Kong Island itself, together with a number of small adjacent islands, comprise 29 square miles. Kowloon and Stonecutters Island comprise another 3 square miles. The New Territories, which consist of part of the mainland and more than 230 islands, have a total area of 365 square miles.

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TOPOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY

Hong Kong is part of a series of intruded domes of granitic rocks which cover south-east China. There are only small areas of sedimentary rocks in the Colony. The age relationships of the major groups of rocks are associated with the intrusions and moun- tain building of the Jurassic, Laramide and Alpine revolutions. These intrusions made the conditions favourable for the formation of minerals of some importance. Galena, silver, wolframite, molyb- denite, pyrite, magnetite, hematite, cassiterite, gold, sphalerite, graphite, fluorspar, quartz, beryl, felspar and kaolinite have all been found. The general structure of the region is that of a plunging