Hong Kong's streets are among the most interesting in the great East, for they strike the key of true cosmopolitanism. Along them 'rickshaws pass in endless procession, electric cars roar, and sedan-chairs swing. The chair borne by four bearers provides the acme of transportation in fine weather. Eighty per cent, of Hong Kong's people are Chinese, and to this multitude the human contributions of Europe and America form necessarily a thin relief. Extremely picturesque are the compradore and taipan in costumes of the richest of silks, more so than is the poor coolie in dirty short trousers and jacket, pigtail coiled for convenience about the head, whose face is none too familiar with soap and water. In and out of the ever-moving multitude glide the tall, bright-eyed sons of India, the Sikhs, who are everywhere in the East. Soldiers in regimentals; jack tars of many nations; policemen, white, yellow, and black, are included in the picture. Here is the somber Britisher with confident stride and air of proprietorship, there the unromantic German slowly but surely capturing Oriental trade. Frenchmen and Scandinavians rub shoulders along the Queen's Road with the matter of fact American and the dark man from Italy; whilst now and then a peculiar gait or unusual costume distinguishes a South American or a son of the Philippines. Here, in short, within this congested square mile of the European quarter are daily to be picked representatives of the world's nations. A study of the crowd is an education in itself. The splendid buildings speak of commercial prosperity--banks, shops, offices and clubs. Nearly every structure is the seat of prosperous commercial ventures in Hong Kong and China proper; and tiers of water-front warehouses locally called "godowns," are filled with foodstuffs and manufactures that in time will be distributed through every town of importance in the Flowery Kingdom. Hong Kong boasts that her docks can accommodate the largest ships afloat (a fact until the _Minnesota_ and _Dakota_, loaded with American flour, vainly sought wharfage), and that she possesses the largest sugar refinery in the world. But these circumstances are subordinate to the British government's real interest in Hong Kong--to make it the base of naval power in Asia, with dockyards and repair-shops equal to any demand, and with coal-bins stacked with the prerequisite to sea-power. [Illustration: A FORMER "HIS EXCELLENCY THE GOVERNOR" OF HONG KONG]