creep in, the Government would take the management of the hospital out of their hands. This was a fair specimen of Sir Richard's way of dealing with the Chinese community. He invariably treated them with unwearied consideration but with rigid strictness. The result was that, by the time of Sir Richard's departure, his administration left upon the Chinese people rather a favourable impression. Though they dreaded him at first as a stern disciplinarian, they always respected him and finally he became rather a popular hero in their eyes.
The population of Hongkong increased, during this administration, from 117,471 souls in the year 1866 to 124,198 in the year 1871. But this is no progress when it is compared with the state of the population (125,504) in the year 1865, and indicates that the general influence of Sir Richard's administration did not tend to encourage Chinese to settle in Hongkong.
The sanitation of the Colony was at a low ebb in January, 1866, when the mortality among the troops reached an extraordinary rate, supposed to be caused by the severe night duties thrown upon European soldiers in consequence of the withdrawal of Indian regiments. Hongkong, once more, gained an unenviable notoriety through exaggerative descriptions of the insalubrity of its climate published in home papers in 1866 and 1867, and particularly in the Times and in the Army & Navy Gazette. In April, 1869, it was locally reported that the sanitary conditions had been steadily improving and that, with the exception of the case of the troops, the rate of mortality among European residents had steadily decreased since 1863. Indeed a table of the mortality of Hongkong inhabitants from 1858 to 1868 shewed that in no year registered had the mortality been so low (2 per cent.) among Europeans as during the year 1869. The Colonial Surgeon, in his report for 1869, reported a rise in the death rate, which he ascribed to the longer duration of the summer heat, but declared Hongkong to be remarkably healthy for the tropics. Great importance was now attached to the extension of afforestation coupled with the unsparing removal
