be told than that éf the British No more fascinating story could in the Far East, told to the Society of Arts recently, by Professor A. Middleton-Smith, M. Se., M.I. Mech.E-, who is Taikoo Professor of Engineering in the University of Hongkong, says "Public Opinion."
Whet a romance is the story of that splendid island as he told it!
"The Chinese ceded a barren island in order to keep the British out of Canton, but no one, a few British traders and sailors, regarded the island as anything but a temporary base. In the first few years of occupation it was terribly unhealthy; one-third of a British regiment died in one year, and that was nothing unusual, But the little stream of British trade from the Canton river has spread all over the Far East. In 1841 Hongkong was the home of a handful of pirates. It was just a barren rock forming one side of a magnificent natural harbour; ° today it contains a prosperous city with justice and freedom for all.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.