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Rh out that the terms fixed for the disposal of land had evidently been no discouragement to building speculations. There were some large floating warehouses in the harbour, notably the Hormanjee Bomanjee belonging to Jardine, Matheson & Co., and the John Barry belonging to Dent & Co. Finally, there was a brisk business done in opium by half a dozen British firms. Unfortunately, however, as to other business, there was since the commencement of 1844 next to none in Hongkong, although the Chinese population continued to increase and reached, in April 1844, a total of 19,000 Chinese, including now even a sprinkling of some 1,000 women and children. The cessation of the war, the opening of the port of Shanghai (November 17, 1843) and of four other Chinese ports, coupled with the gradual increase of steamers in place of sailing vessels, had disorganized the old lines of business both on the Chinese and on the foreign side, had scattered and drawn away to those open ports capital and enterprise at the expense of Hongkong. In addition to these causes detrimental to Hongkong, the Chinese Authorities did everything in their power to discourage trade with Hongkong, whilst the Hongkong Government appeared to the merchants to work into the hands of the Mandarins. All the sanguine expectations, entertained since 1841, that business would flourish at Hongkong just as it used to flourish at Whampoa, gradually vanished from month to month ever since the exchange of the Treaty ratifications. Hongkong now seemed in 1844 to be at best a second Lintin, the flourishing centre of a limited and illegal trade in opium, but palpably shunned by the legitimate Chinese trade. Numbers of Chinese merchants in Canton would have been willing enough to send down to Hongkong junks laden with tea, rhubarb, camphor, silk and cassia, and to send back those junks to Canton freighted with India cotton or yarn or English piece goods, but the Cantonese Authorities set their faces against it like a flint. It had been the fond dream of British, merchants that, whilst indeed foreign vessels could only trade with the five open ports, natives of China would be allowed to bring goods from any port of China, and convey British goods