Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/372

282 made inquiries about me, for lo and behold! when I went down to lunch I was received with most edifying politeness, and gushed over in English by every one save the two Dutchmen. Nothin was good enough for me then, and the doctor sai that a mistake had been made, and I ought to have been placed beside the Captain! I said I was all right where I was; but, strange to say, and I am sure to their great wonderment, I devoted all my conversation to the two Dutchmen opposite, who gradually thawed, and afterwards confided to me that they had been so ignored by their table companions that they had ceased to speak at all. As I am sometimes amiable, but not very often, I at the next meal had them all talking and arguing as if they were bosom friends—but not one word of German would I understand! There was mean spite, wasn’t it?

It was quite late in the evening of Thursday the roth when we entered the harbour of Hong-Kong—but what a magnificent sight! All the shipping in the harbour and the town right up to the Peak blazing with electric lights—it was like a fairy illumination! In the morning we moved into the dock at Kowloon. Many warships of various nations lay in the harbour, and it was crowded with other craft, including Chinese junks and sampans. Fine houses cluster above the town right up to the Peak, 1000 feet high above it, and the effect is very fine.

It was only last year that Kowloon Peninsula with its Hinterland became British, but there is quite a town at Kowloon, with forts, barracks, an hotel, and wharfs. Now good roads run inland on the mainland for six miles, and the mountains which dominated Hong-Kong are ours, and not the source of danger they were. Ferry-boats ply across the harbour to Victoria, the town, though