JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
182 
while over them the other houses seem to rise in ever-narrowing 
terraces, until at a distance of about 200 feet above the harbour 
level they break up and disperse into scattered shining bungalows 
perched upon arduously hewn sites, and straggling up the peak 
in solitary or duplicate grandeur. Supreme over all towers the 
sombre green peak, in height about 1800 at the point where the 
signal-staff can perhaps be seen flying—the intimation of some 
approaching mail steamer ; and more towards the centre of the 
island, where the hills sink to a height of from 12 to 1400 feet, 
may be perceived, like tiny toy houses, the residences of those who 
prefer the cooler and mistier regions of the upper air. Should the 
new-comer, however, arrive during the season of the south-west 
monsoon which blows from April to September, it is possible that 
a heavy combination of mist, clouds, and rain will for a while 
conceal from his view not only the peak and its adjacent hills, but 
even the higher residences of the town, and he may perhaps have 
to disembark in such a downpour of rain as will almost wash holes 
through his umbrella. 
The first act of the stranger is to commit his baggage to two, 
or, if necessary, four Chinese coolies, each wearing little besides 
a loin cloth and an enormous pagoda-crowned hat the size of a 
small umbrella. One striking feature about them is the extra¬ 
ordinary dimensions to which their calves have been developed by 
the exigencies of their calling of carrying great weights. The 
burdens these toilers will transport up gradients which an unen¬ 
cumbered European very reluctantly scales are something quite 
astounding, while on level ground they are proportionately heavier. 
Whatever luggage our traveller may have is very quickly slung 
upon a thick bamboo pole by these experts, who trot off with it 
through the grimy ugly throng of people on the quays, leaving its 
owner to follow in a light bamboo sedan chair, painted greeD, 
and borne on the shoulders of two other coolies of less stalwart 
dimensions and more abundant raiment. 
The “chair,'’ as it is locally termed, is a great Hong Kong 
institution, and one with which a new arrival cannot fail to make 
a speedy acquaintance. It stands to the Europeans, and indeed 
to everybody, in place of every other kind of conveyance, as it is 
the only one of which the hilly nature of the town admits, and 
though often needlessly used by persons w r ho would do better to 
walx, is occasionally quite a necessity. Every lady has a private 
chair, so have most married men ; and self-indulgent bachelors, 
particularly fat ones, are not ashamed to own them. On Sundays 
the cathedral is beset with chairs and couples of attendant coolie 
boys wearing the distinctive uniforms of their employers, whom 
they have deposited and are waiting to carry away when service 
is over. There is, perhaps, no other place where a small society 
of Europeans are to be seen in a more orientally foreign environ¬ 
ment and amid more beautiful natural surroundings than fit the 
meeting and dissolution of that congregation of chairs on a Sunday 
in the summer season. There are Chinese, there are tall dusky 
red-turbancd Siliks policemen, there are English naval and mili¬ 
tary officers in tropical uniform, civilians in white, civilians in 
black, civilians with bell-topper hats, low felt hats, mushroom 
hats and helmets, ladies in every degree of clothing from black 
silk to airy tarlatan ; while around all is intense sunlight, mois¬ 
ture-dripping trees, white-gleaming buildings, soft green sward, 
a smiling harbour covered with shipping of every nation, and the 
solemn strains of the old sacred home music pouring through 
the doors and windows of the cathedral. But though useful 
as an aid to religion, the chair is much more indispensable as 
a means of transport to the halls of pleasure. Such is the 
nature of the Hong Kong climate for five months of the summer, 
that to walk any distance in dress clothes, even on level ground, 
would result in your presenting yourself before your host or 
hostess with woefully limp shirt cuffs and shirt front, while to 
scale 300 feet or more to the higher residences of the town would 
be utteily destructive of any conventional stiffness of linen. 
Hence for such expeditions the services of two hired coolie boys 
and a chair are absolutely necessary. You are at first very much 
struck by these Alpine ascents on the shoulders of natives, espe¬ 
cially if they wheeze a little, as they do to impress and excite the 
liberality of new comers ; but in time, as the muscles of your legs 
soften your heart hardens, and you view the panting coolie with 
equanimity. The mystery to me is how these coolies can struggle 
up such heights with a mere moderate 150 lbs. specimen of 
humanity like myself without breaking their hearts. When, 
however, you see four of them jogging up to the peak, a height of 
1200 feet on two mules, and bearing some 220-pounder incarnation 
of ponderosity, reason and physiological knowledge fail in explain¬ 
ing the constitution of the Chinaman, and you can scarcely help 
wondering whether he is a part of the organic creation at all, 
but not rather some marvellous automaton cunningly devised by 
Providence for the special benefit of the European. 
[ August 25, 1881. 
It is over the “pravas” or quays that the newly disembarked 
visitor must approach the better parts of Victoria. These, like the 
rest of the town, are composed of solid granite, and here and 
there at low tide may still be seen the wreck of the old praya 
torn up in the great typhoon of 1874. In that convulsion, among 
innumerable other casualties on sea and shore, two steamers were 
dashed by wind and wave almost upon the warehouse fronts, and 
their shrieking occupants drowned under the very windows and 
within earshot of the cowering inhabitants. For days afterwards 
dead bodies were picked up everywhere, and it has been roughly 
stated that at least eight thousand of the Chinese boating popu¬ 
lation then perished. Now the praya is restored, and the boating 
population swarms along the edge in more than its pristine vigour. 
There you can see countless sampans each containing a family 
consisting of a haggard old father or mother or both, and from 
two to four children. In that cramped and unstable household 
contrivance they eat, drink, sleep, have their being, and will 
probably die if another typhoon does not first overtake and tumble 
them out into a watery grave. 
Along the prayas for a distance of a mile and a half there is 
nought but hurry and bustle : great steamers coaling or discharging 
cargo, coolies running hither and thither with enormous bales of 
merchandise swinging between them, and a heaving mass of 
sampans bumping against each other under the stone parapets 
of the quays, from which proceed the high-pitched metallic tones 
of the owners asking in broken English if you “ wautchee saam- 
paan.” Up and down the roadway passes an ever-moving throng 
of squalid wrinkled-looking men and women with garments sin¬ 
gularly alike, consisting of very loose-fitting jackets and trousers 
of a dirty blue or brown colour, the women being distinguishable 
from the men by having their hair not “ in queue,” but plastered 
down and flattened out into two stiff protuberant waves on each 
side of their faces. Here and there are groups of Chinese urchins, 
fit subjects for the London School Board, playing at marbles, which 
they throw by placing the stone before the second finger of the 
right hand and drawing it back with the first finger and thumb 
of the left like a catapult. “ One touch of nature makes the whole 
world kin,” and I have often felt the contempt with which I 
regarded these sinian-looking little creatures relax on viewing 
the childish gaiety, eagerness, and altercations with which they 
pursue their sports. 
A great feature on the prayas, and indeed in all Chinese streets, 
are the confectionery stalls, where are displayed peculiar small 
variegated cubes or slabs of what appears to be a mixture of 
sugar and paste, and covered with hieroglyphics, which may 
possibly attract a European to try the experiment of putting them 
into his mouth and out again. Itinerant or localised restaurants, 
too, are visible at very short intervals, where the most extraordi¬ 
nary-looking soap-shaped kinds of white and yellow batter are 
vended, after having been split up and fried in a bubbling pan of 
liquid fat. At other points are kitchens, where whole or divided 
fish, fowl, rabbit, and especially sucking pig, are to be seen hanging 
up ready for direct transport to the family tables of their patrons. 
The Chinaman seems to desire none of that privacy at meal times 
which Europeans prefer. If he is of the poorer class he will squat 
down at an eating stall or at the corner of the street, and ply his 
chopsticks regardless of a w'hole crowd of admiring Europeans. 
If he is well to do he still sits down with the male portion of his 
family and his employes round a circular black table in the 
middle of his shop, leaving the door wide open to the street. The 
operation of the chopstick is very disappointing, being by no 
means of that rapid juggling nature which one has been led to 
expect. The eater takes up a small dish or bowl full of rice, 
arranges some pieces of meat upon it, and then, lifting it close to 
his mouth, shovels the contents in with the chopsticks. "Women 
of the better and reputable classes are never seen eating and but 
rarely walking in public. They appear to be a repressed and 
spiritless class, looking at everybody and everything out of doors 
with a stupid stolid gaze, which contrasts remarkably with the 
piquant genial demeanour of the few Japanese women that are to 
be seen around. Occasionally you will meet a China woman in 
her blue jacket and trousers and starchy coiffure coming hobbling 
along on what looks exactly like a donkey’s two hmd hoofs. 
These are the tiny feet we have so often heard about, and are one 
of the most hideous of the many sacrifices w T hich female vanity 
and tyrannical custom have offered up at the altar of Fashion. 
The practice is, I am told, decaying.— -A Wandebek. 
(To be continued.) 
Peteified Foeests. —In 1871, when the writer of this spent 
some weeks in the Rocky Mountains, the petrified remains of a 
forest of Redwood, Oak, and other trees petrified, thrown up from 
