The Governor of Hong-Kong's Chinese secretary prided
himself on his accurate and correct English. I heard the Governor ask
this secretary one day where a certain report was. "I placed it in the
second _business_-hole on your Excellency's desk," answered Mr. Wung
Ho, who evidently considered it very vulgar to use the term
"pigeon-hole."
Considering that eighty years ago, when it was first ceded to Britain,
Hong-Kong was a barren, treeless, granite island, it really is an
astonishing place. It is easily the handsomest modern city in Asia,
has a population of 400,000, and is by a long way the busiest port in
the world. It is an exceedingly pretty place, too, with its rows of
fine European houses rising in terraces out of a sea of greenery, and
it absolutely hums with prosperity. If Colombo is the Clapham
Junction, Hong-Kong is certainly the Crewe of the East, for steamship
lines to every part of the world are concentrated here. With the
exception of racing ponies, there is not one horse on the island.
Macao, the old Portuguese colony, is only forty miles from Hong-Kong.
The arrangements on the river steamers are rather peculiar, for only
European passengers are allowed on the spar deck. All Chinese
passengers, of whatever degree, have to descend to the lower decks,
which are enclosed with strong steel bars.
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