Colonial Office at home is not quite so prompt as the Foreign Office in its publication of the reports of its servants abroad, and it has only just issued Sir William Robinson's annual report on Hongkong for 1894, which the Governor sent home to Mr. Chamberlain the 10th of July last.
It makes a pamphlet of eighteen pages net, costing 1}d., and eight pages are specially devoted to the plague, whose baleful influence overshadows more or less the other ten pages. 'I'here is little that is new in it to readers in China, but it should not be dismissed without a short notice, The bugbear of the East, the fall in exchange, is the first subject noted. Towards the end of 1893 the dollar had been fairly steady at 2s, 4d., but it fell suddenly during the first two months of 1894 to 1s, 1144, "reducing business transactions to the level of a mere game of chance, and materially affecting the prospects of the import trade from gold-standard countries." There was, however, a recovery in April, which was continued 638 in May, "and there was reason to look forward to an improvement in trade generally, Io was, however, at this juncture that a great calamity inter-in the form of a disastrous epidemit News that the Black Plague was raging neat Canton was received in Hongkong early in April. On the 11th of May the first seven cases were discovered in Hongkong in the Tung Wa hospital, an entirely Chinese institution. Sir iam Robinson gives details of the energetic measures that were taken by the sanitary authorities in Hongkong to combat the disease, and the great difficulty that was experienced from the dislike of the Chinese to these measures. Notwithstanding the efforts made, " the number of fresh cases rose with alarming rapidity doring the month of June from between 20 and 30 daily to 60 and 70, and even to 80 and 90 towards the latter end of the month, and on one occasion the official returns for the previous twenty-four hours recorded the terrible total of 109, including dead bodies picked up in the streets... By the middle of July there was a perceptible decrease in the epidemic. The disease further decreased during the latter half of that month and during the succeeding month of August, until it gradually disappeared in the early days of September, leaving the Colony the ghastly legacy of a death-roll extending to some 2,550 names, including that of the much-lamented Captain Vesey of the Shropshire Light Infantry, who as a volunteer in command of one of the cleansing parties, nobly sacrificed his life in the interests of the Colony." In addition to the recorded deaths, a very Inrge number of Chinese fled' to their native places, having contracted the disease in Hongkong. The Hongkong government having forbidden the free departure from the Colony of plague-stricken patients, "the Chinese re-talloted by leaving the Colony en masse, Compradores, contractors, shroffs, tradesmen, domestic servants, and coolies all joined in the general exodus numbering altogether some 100,000 persons.. The large sugar refineries stopped working, nearly all the Chinese shops were closed, business generally was at a standstill, and private families were put to the greatest inconvenience for want of servants, No more melancholy sight than that presented by the city of Victoria at this period can well be imagined, Shops and houses were shut up, and in the usually busy and well-thronged streets the only signs of life were here and there a solitary foot passenger, or the rumbling of a transport waggon proceeding to the hospitals to take up its ghastly freight for conveyance to the cemeteries, or the measured tread of a party of cleansers' returning from their filthy work in the infected slums Sir William Robinson mentions Dr, Lowson's carefully prepared and interesting report on the disease, and the valuable and successful investigation of Professor Aoyama and Dr. Kitasato, the former of whom had a practical experience of it, but recovered. The Report goes on to say that " experience of the plague has not unnaturally dispelled much of its mystery and robbed it of many of its initial horrors. We now know, thanks to the valuable discovery referred to above, that the disease is caused by a bacillus or plague-germ in the blood, that that germ thrives in a temperature ranging from 60° to 90°, that it is abundantly found in filthy matter of all sorts, and that its great
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.