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Rh his hand while he silently but deliberately went round, from one department to the other, probing by the most searching investigation the extent and nature of the mischief wrought. The colonists wondered and groaned owing to the Governor's seeming inactivity, whilst a wholesome fear was instilled in the minds of all officials by the Governor's repeated and most unexpected surprise visits, and by his minute questionings as to every financial, executive and administrative detail, such as had never been inquired into before. But when he once had satisfied himself as to the real position of affairs, he set to work as a determined reformer, launching one measure after the other, regardless of the hostile criticisms of local public opinion and impatient even of the restraints which successive Secretaries of State sought to put upon his dauntless energy. In the face of much opposition and suffering severe opprobrium on all sides, Sir Richard went on with his labours as a reformer, honestly and fearlessly striving to do right and content to be judged in the future when his measures would have produced their natural results. He had not to wait very long before the Hongkong public, abandoning their early prejudices, frankly recognized his worth. After four years' untiring exertions, reasons of health compelled him to ask for a furlough, intending to proceed only to Japan, where he had spent a few weeks in 1868 (October 29 to December 12) for a brief rest. But the Colonial Office thought it expedient that he should, by a visit to England, combine, with the object of recruiting his health, the pressing duty of explaining to the Secretary of State the grounds of his divergent policy, distasteful in some respects to the Colonial Office. When he was about to start on this trip to Japan and England (April 13, 1870), the community of Hongkong, having by this time taken the correct measure of their Governor's character and work, unanimously acknowledged that he had the true interests of the Colony at heart, according to his own views of what was best, and that he had, sincerely and in many respects most successfully, striven to administer the government and to legislate for the Colony's ultimate good