in the Northern Pacific, and given us a share in the future destinies of Asia largely distinct from that conferred upon us by our position in India. Hong Kong itself, which we have transformed, since we first occupied it sixty years ago, from a bare and almost untenanted rock into a magnificent clearing-house for the trade of the Far East, with a population of 800,000 souls, with a fortified and well-equipped naval station, with a splendid natural harbour and excellent dock accommodation, scarcely, however, yet adequate to the needs of a port where the annual entries and clearances (nearly 22,000,000 tons in 1908) represent a larger tonnage of ocean shipping than any other port in the Empire, not excepting London—Hong Kong, as a British possession, exists solely as the warden of the British settlements and markets in the Far East.
The Opening up of China.
The first successful attempts to open up intercourse with China were made from India. In the enterprising days of 'Good Queen Bess' three ships had, it is true, been despatched, in charge of one Benjamin Wood, to convey letters from Elizabeth to the Emperor Wanleh, the last of the great rulers of the Ming Dynasty. But Wood's expedition came to grief on the way, and, though some forty years later, in 1637, a squadron of four British vessels under Captain Weddell actually reached Canton, and by the preliminary argument of a three hours' bombardment appear to have temporarily convinced the Chinese of the advantages of international trade, the results achieved were not of a permanent character. It was the East India Company that, under a charter from the British Crown, first established, in 1664, and maintained thereafter for more than a century and a half, regular commercial relations, though often by very irregular methods, with the Middle Kingdom. The China trade, centred at Canton, remained an actual monopoly of the Company until 1884. But by that time it had come to be regarded
