CHAPTER X.

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.