THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
435 
tary precision and fed in four minutes. The regime of 
this prison civilizes rather than punishes and is a good il¬ 
lustration of the tine work the Americans are doing in 
these far away islands. While we were there, the fear 
was expressed by many Hritish and Germans as well as 
Americans that the United States w'ould, in the near fu¬ 
ture, turn over the government of the islands to the Fili¬ 
pinos and we were told that policy would be a great mis¬ 
take and it certainly seemed so to us. 
At Hong Kong we were on the fringe of the great Chin¬ 
ese Empire of over 400 million people. The island is at 
the mouth of the Canton River, close to the mainland, all 
entrances and neighboring heights are very strongly for¬ 
tified for the British have made of this place a second Gi¬ 
braltar and maintain a permanent garrison of over 5,000 
<*ity of Victoria (Hong Kong) contains fine modern build¬ 
ings, excellent clubs and large hanks, for Hong Kong is 
the gatew ay to China and an immense liusiness is done 
there. There are a few' electric trams, l>ut the principal 
mode of getting around is liy a chair carried on the 
shoulders of two coolies and by jinrickshaws, the narrow' 
streets are jammed with these conveyances. You can 
hire a rickshaw for 10 cents per hour, or a chair with tw o 
men all day of 12 hours for 50 cents, they go fast too, the 
rickshaw men ahvays run and the chair men walk. 
Europeans seldom walk, it is too hot, liesides the smells 
are not so noticeable when riding, so one seldom sees any 
but Chinese in the narrow streets. We went up the fun¬ 
icular to the Peak and looked down on the city and har¬ 
bor 1800 feet below us. Behind us many islands dotted 
Part of Harbor, Hong Kong, China. 
soldiers there. While I am not ready to admit that Hong 
Kong harbor is one of the most beautiful in the world— 
as some claim, I think it certainly is one of the busiest 
and most interesting. The shipping is very large, not far 
behind New York or London, hundreds of ships of all na¬ 
tions lie at anchor in the large land-locked harbor and 
'that no space be lost, many Chinese junks and thous¬ 
ands of native sampans fill up the intervening spaces. 
Millions of Chinese live in sampans on the rivers and 
harbors and though these boats are usually only from 16 
to 20 feet long, the wdiole family of 8 or 10 people live in 
them, if they haven’t enough children of their own, they 
buy more and bring them up as their ow'n. They eat 
sleep, and live on these small boats—and seldom go on 
land, of course everything is done on deck and they al¬ 
ways seem to be busy and happy. 
The population of Hong Kong is about 340,000, w'ith 
about 90 per cent. Chinese. The European part of the 
the estuary of the Canton River, noted for the number of 
pirates which infest its waters; the hulk of the Canton- 
Hong Kong regular nightly steamer Tai-on lay just be¬ 
low us, it was attacked by river pirates about 
six weeks back, then burnt and run ashore, 
about 126 people including many w hite passengers were 
killed or burnt. British torpedo boats have since patrol¬ 
led this part of the river, but some passengers w'e met in 
Hong Kong, who had just returned from Canton, told us 
that 50 or 60 shots had been fired at them from the river 
banks. These pirates usually find safe refuge in Macao 
—the Portugese settlement about 35 miles from Hong 
Kong on the other side of the river. 
There are no horses in Hong Kong, all heavy mer¬ 
chandise is carried on bamboo poles on the shoulders of 
coolies or on large hand trucks pulled by coolies. We 
were told that the Chinese poison any horses taken there, 
fearing that the horses would do the w'ork the Chinese 
