The
Magnificent Harbor, Which Has An Area Of Ten Square Miles, Is
Surrounded By Fantastic, Broken Mountains From Three Thousand
To four
thousand feet high, and the magnificent city of Victoria extends for
four miles along its southern shore, with
Its six thousand houses of
stone and brick and the princely mansions and roomy bungalows of its
merchants and officials scrambling up the steep sides of the Peak, the
highest point of the island, carrying verdure and shade with them. Damp
as its summer is, the average rainfall scarcely exceeds seventy-eight
inches, but it is hotter than Singapore in the hot season, though the
latter is under eighty miles from the Equator.
The causes by which this little island, which produces nothing, has
risen into first-rate importance among our colonies are, that Victoria,
with its magnificent harbor, is a factory for our Chinese commerce and
offers unrivaled facilities for the military and naval forces which are
necessary for the protection not only of that commerce but of our
interests in the far East. It is hardly too much to say that it is the
naval and commercial terminus of the Suez Canal. Will it be believed
that the amount of British and foreign tonnage annually entering and
leaving the port averages two millions of tons? and that the number of
native vessels trading to it is about fifty-two thousand, raising the
total ascertained tonnage to upward of three millions and a half, or
half a million tons in excess of Singapore? To this must be added
thousands of smaller native boats of every build and rig trading to
Hong Kong, not only from the Chinese coasts and rivers, but from Siam,
Japan, and Cochin China. Besides the "P. and O.," the Messageries
Maritimes, the Pacific Mail Company, the Eastern and Australian Mail
Company, the Japanese "Mitsu Bichi" Mail Company, etc., all regular
mail lines, it has a number of lines of steamers trading to England,
America, and Germany, with local lines both Chinese and English, and
lines of fine sailing clippers, which, however, are gradually falling
into disuse, owing to the dangerous navigation of the China seas, and
the increasing demand for speed.
Victorian firms have almost the entire control of the tea and silk
trade, and Victoria is the centre of the trade in opium, sugar, flour,
salt, earthenware, oil, amber, cotton, and cotton goods, sandal-wood,
ivory, betel, vegetables, live stock, granite, and much else. The much
abused term "emporium of commerce" may most correctly be applied to it.
It has five docks, three slips, and every requisite for making
extensive repairs for ships of war and merchantmen.
It has telegraphic communication with the whole civilized world, and
its trade is kept thereby in a continual fever.
It has a large garrison, for which it pays to England 20,000 pounds a
year. Were it not for this force, its six hundred and fifty policemen,
of whom only one hundred and ten are Europeans, might not be able to
overawe even as much as they do the rowdy and ruffianly elements of its
heterogeneous population.
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