HONG-KONG.
HONG-KONG, Dec. 3, 1889.
We have been detained here ten days, awaiting the arrival of a P. and O.
steamer, for which we were booked, but have passed the time in a very
delightful manner.
I went nearly every day to the park and public gardens, of about twenty
acres, situated several hundred feet above the main street, laid out in
the best manner, and containing a great variety of trees and flowers,
such as grow only in tropical climates. On one occasion a friend and
myself were sitting on a bench near a handsomely dressed Chinese
gentleman. My friend said: "See what a handsome girl is coming, and how
beautifully she is dressed, but how deplorable that she has such little
feet." I agreed with him, and said it was a pity such a pretty creature
was obliged to submit to a barbarous custom like that. The Chinese
gentleman spoke to us in excellent English, and said: "Do you think so?
That is my daughter, and while I agree with you, we feel obliged to make
her feet small or no Chinese gentleman would marry her."
We made apologies which were kindly accepted, and in a long conversation
with the gentleman we learned much of China, he being a resident of
Canton, who had been educated in the United States. I cannot agree with
my Chinese friend that it will be so long a time before China will be
opened to European civilization, for her 332,000,000 people are
beginning to feel the pressure of surrounding nations; Russia on the
north, and England, Germany, France, and Italy on her sea-coasts, and
above all the example of the wonderful advances made by Japan are having
strong influences upon China. China has now for a Prime-Minister, Li
Hung Chang, a very great man, the equal of Bismarck or Gladstone, and
the young Emperor has very advanced ideas. Just now we read in the
newspapers that Li Hung Chang had caused a system of railways to be laid
out, to run all over the vast empire, but it appears that the religious
authorities have some sort of a veto on political actions, and because
one of the gates at Pekin had been destroyed by fire, which they
attributed to the anger of the gods on account of the attempt to build
railroads, the invention of "foreign devils," they would not consent,
and consequently the railroad plan was abandoned for the present. There
is only one railroad in the Empire, up north, running from a coal mine
to the sea, eighty miles long.
The Emperor has, in his extensive palace grounds at Pekin, a miniature
railroad, much like the one which was in the grounds of the Centennial
Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876, with a locomotive and car attached,
which was built and presented to him by the French, and he is said to be
very much pleased riding about on it.
I think it a misfortune to China, and to this country, that our great
general, Ulysses S. Grant, was not permitted to live a few years longer,
for through the great friendship of Li Hung Chang for him, and the high
regard in which he was held, not only by all the rulers of the Asiatic
countries, but by the people themselves, it is more than likely that we
would have seen China opened to modern civilization, as Japan has been,
and the United States of America reaping the advantages of close
commercial relations with her, and at the same time amicably restricting
the emigration of her people to this country.
One afternoon we hired a steam yacht and went about the harbor and
partly around the island. We stopped to examine a dry dock, where a
large steamer was being repaired, and I was delighted to see that one of
the big pumps used for pumping the water out of the dock was made by the
A. S. Cameron Co., of New York, for you do not often see any thing in
this part of the world to remind you of home,--kerosene oil, Singer's
sewing-machines, and clocks being about all. The English appear to
supply nearly every thing to the countless millions of this Eastern
country, owing, of course, to the fact that their government does so
much to forward the interests of her merchants and manufacturers, and I
think it only right to say that wherever you see a British flag in this
part of the world there follows it Christianity, civilization in all its
advanced phases, and safety to life and property, and not anywhere is
the great contrast between civilization and semi-barbarism shown so
strongly as in the comforts and beauties of this lovely city as against
the horrors of Canton.
This is an important commercial city. The governor stated in a late
message that it was the third or fourth export city in the world. There
is a great deal of building going on up the mountains, the bricks for
which are being carried from the vessels to their destinations by
coolies, each man carrying two baskets suspended from a bamboo stick
across his shoulders, each basket containing eighteen large bricks. The
mountains are very steep, and the distance about two miles, so that the
men can only make two or three trips a day, and their pay is five cents
a trip.
The fine winding roads were alive with these men; a thousand or more
were to be seen at one time.