settlement on the borders of China, and that we as a people are wholly engaged in commerce with that Empire, and that Hongkong represents our greatest possession. The floating population must not be overlooked. There are in Hongkong waters many thousands of such people, who make their homes in their boats, and earn their subsistence by fishing, or attending upon the ships in the harbour. These folk carefully study the indications of the weather, and can calculate with great shrewdness the near approach of a storm; they usually verify their own observations by ascertaining the barometrical changes from foreign ship-captains in port, and when they have settled in their own mind that a typhoon is at hand, they cross the harbour en masse, and shelter in the bays of Kowloon until the fury of the hurricane is past. The men in the boats are naked to the waist and bronzed with constant exposure, but the women are decently clothed and are pretty and attractive-looking. Some of them, if we may judge by their pale skins, their finely formed features and their large lustrous eyes are not of purely Chinese blood.
The sedan chair, in use all over China by the official classes, was the favourite mode of conveyance in Hongkong, and afforded remuneration to a large number of stalwart coolies. This has been replaced by the jimricksha from Japan, a hand-cart on wheels with a man motor between the shafts. The change is not without significance, as the Japanese are destined by modes less gentle, if all the more sure, to drive their neighbours over paths of progress hitherto unexplored. I may here note that in a former work I made a fairly accurate forecast of the recent conflict between the Empires of China and Japan and its issue. The jimricksha men, who take the place of our cab-drivers, make it their study to find out the habits of European residents,
