GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



279 



4,686,401. The revenue was 638,188; expendi- 

 ture, 543,506. The military force is 250 men. 

 Import duties are levied on kerosene, spirits, to- 

 bacco, and salt, and export duties on gambier, 

 sago, jungle products, and dried fish. 



CcjfloH has a representative system of govern- 

 ment, and in the Legislative Council of 17 members 

 are 8 representatives of different races and classes 

 of the population. The Governor in 1900 was Sir 

 Joseph West Ridgeway. The area is 25,333 square 

 miles, and the population was estimated in 1898 

 at 3,448,752, consisting of 6,577 Europeans, 24,071 

 burghers descended from Europeans, 2,195,947 

 Singhalese, 993,856 Tamils, including recent immi- 

 grants from southern India, 11,119 Malays, 207,425 

 Moors or Mohammedans other than Malays, 810 

 Veddahs, the remnant of the aborigines, and 8,947 

 others. The birth rate is 38.2, the death rate 

 26.2 per mille. The once flourishing coffee planta- 

 tions have disappeared; now the tea culture is 

 nourishing, and the English planters have devel- 

 oped the most advanced and scientific mechanical 

 processes for treating the leaf. Tamils are brought 

 over from India to work on the plantations for a 

 fixed term of years. The arrivals in 1898 were 

 136,864; departures, 105,706. The revenue for 1898 

 was 25,138,669 rupees; expenditure, 22,843,852 

 rupees. The population of Colombo, the capital, 

 is about 30,000. The naval station of Trincomalee, 

 on the east coast, is the headquarters of the British 

 fleet in Indian waters. The colony pays to the 

 Imperial Government 1,884,934 rupees a year as 

 the cost of the military garrison. Of the total 

 area of 16,233,000 acres, 2^231,948 acres are culti- 

 vated and 826,427 acres are pasture land, feeding 

 4,127 horses, 1,310,447 cattle, 83,620 sheep, and 

 163,987 goats. The tea plantations occupy 424,856 

 acres; rice and other grains, 753,872 acres; cocoa- 

 nut plantations, 864,296 acres; coffee plantations, 

 19,023 acres; cinnamon plantations, 46,117 acres; 

 cacao plantations, 33,260 acres; tobacco planta- 

 tions, 11,127 acres. There are 1,692 plumbago 

 mines and 412 mines for precious stones. The total 

 value of imports in 1898 was 97,893,059 rupees, 

 and of exports 95,097,692 rupees. Rice and grain, 

 coal, cotton goods, salt fish, and spirits are the 

 leading imports. The export of tea was valued at 

 47,734,252 rupees; cocoanut products, 16,904,955 

 rupees; plumbago, 7,174,770 rupees; areca nuts, 

 1,160,838 rupees; coffee, 878,693 rupees. The ex- 

 ports of coffee, owing to the ravages of disease 

 among the plants, fell from 824,509 hundredweight 

 in 1879 to 12,692 hundredweight in 1898, while 

 those of tea increased from 2,392,975 pounds in 

 1884 to 122,395,518 pounds in 1898. The export 

 of cacao has increased from 7,466 hundredweight 

 in 1885 to 38,099 hundredweight in 1898. In 1899 

 a revenue of 25,913,141 rupees was collected, giving 

 a surplus of 962,202 rupees over expenditure. In 

 1900 a still greater increase of revenue was ob- 

 tained, and for 1901 it was estimated at 26,320,000 

 rupees. 



Hong-Kong, a Crown colony, was acquired from 

 China in 1841. The Governor in 1900 was Sir 

 Henry A. Blake. The peninsula of Kaultmg, oppo- 

 site the island of Hong-Kong, was ceded to Great 

 Britain in 1861, and in 1898 an extension inland 

 embracing about 400 square miles, with 100,000 

 inhabitants, was leased for ninety-nine years. 

 The new territory was occupied in August, 1899. 

 The estimated population of the old settlement was 

 254,400 in 1898, of whom 15,190 were whites, in- 

 cluding about 7,000 of Portuguese origin. There 

 were about 5,000 British, and the rest were Ger- 

 mans, Americans, French, Spanish, Italians, Turks, 

 etc. The police and military are largely composed 

 of East Indians. The male whites outnumber the 



females more than three to one, and the discrep- 

 ancy is nearly as great among the Chinese. There 

 i* a constant immigration from China and an 

 emigration of Chinese to various parts of the 

 world. The arrivals of Chinese in 1898 numbered 

 60,432; departures, 105,441. The ordinary revenue 

 in 1898 was 2,672,107; premiums from land and 

 water account, 246,050; ordinary expenditure, 

 2,607,424; expenditure for defensive works and 

 water account, 234,381. The receipts from land 

 tax, licenses, and the opium monopoly exceed the 

 expenses of administration, but the maintenance 

 of a strong body of police requires a heavy ex- 

 penditure. The public debt of 341,800 was in- 

 curred for water works, fortifications, and sanitary 

 works. The military contribution of the colony in 

 1898 was 519,275. Hong-Kong is the center of the 

 Indian opium trade with China, and to a great 

 extent of the Chinese tea and silk export trade 

 and of the import trade in cotton goods, kerosene, 

 flour, and all kinds of Western products and manu- 

 factures; also of the trade in salt, earthenware, 

 amber, sandalwood, ivory, betel, sugar, and many 

 other articles. It is a free port and keeps no 

 record of imports and exports. Of British manu- 

 factures 1,224,158 worth of cotton goods and 

 yarns were imported in 1898, 210.618 worth of 

 woolen goods, 208,534 worth of iron, 77,058 

 worth of machinery, and 25,684 worth of copper. 

 The exports to Great Britain of tea were valued at 

 80,821; of silk, 134,647; of hemp, 270,990; 

 of preserved fruits, 42,966. The merchant ship- 

 ping of the colony on Jan. 1, 1899, consisted of 

 23 sailing vessels, of 6,928 tons, and 37 steamers, 

 of 19,555 tons. The number of vessels entered 

 during 1898 was 5,539, of 6,539,702 tons, not count- 

 ing 29,466 junks, of 1,814,281 tons. There are 

 about 52,000 native vessels in Hong-Kong, of 

 1,300,000 tons. A mint has been established, in 

 which $1,421,487 in silver dollars and half dollars 

 have been coined. The total coin in circulation 

 Mexican, Chinese, and British is about $22.- 

 000,000, and the bank notes amount to $10,000,000. 

 Hong-Kong is the headquarters of the British 

 fleet on the China station. The dockyard is being 

 extended. 



Wei-Hai-Wei, a naval harbor on the peninsula 

 of Shantung, was leased to Great Britain on July 

 1, 1898, for a period to be determined by the ter- 

 mination of Russia's occupation of Port Arthur. 

 The lease includes the port and bay, with the 

 islands in the bay, and a strip of 10 miles inland 

 from the shore. The old defenses were destroyed 

 by the Japanese. New fortifications are being 

 constructed on the island of Liu-Kung. A Chinese 

 regiment has been recruited and trained, to form 

 with a British contingent the permanent garrison. 

 In a zone beyond the limit of British jurisdiction 

 Great Britain has the right to erect defensive 

 works and acquire sites for water supply and 

 communications. 



The Straits Settlements, comprising Singapore, 

 Penang, and Malacca, form a Crown colony which 

 was taken away from the control of the Indian 

 Government in 1867. Sir F. A. Swettenham, Resi- 

 dent General for the Federated Malay States, is 

 acting Governor. The island of Singapore has 

 an area of 206 square miles; the island of Penang, 

 107 square miles; Province Wellesley, on the west- 

 ern side of the Malayan peninsula, 270 square 

 miles; Malacca, on the western coast also, about 

 500 square miles; the Bindings, 389 square miles. 

 The population of Singapore in 1891 was 184,554; 

 of Penang, 235,618; of Malacca, 92,170; total, 

 512.342, comprising 5.290 European males and 1,299 

 females, 3,409 Eurasian males and 3,648 females, 

 and 335,852 Asiatic males and 162,844 females. 



