Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and JapanKing, F. H. (Franklin Hiram)
Science
Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan
King, F. H. (Franklin Hiram)
Agriculture -- China; Agriculture -- Japan; Agriculture -- Korea
Sunday morning, March 7th, passing first extensive sugar refineries,
found us entering the long, narrow and beautiful harbor of Hongkong.
Here, lying at anchor in the ten square miles of water, were five
battleships, several large ocean steamers, many coastwise vessels
and a multitude of smaller craft whose yearly tonnage is twenty to
thirty millions. But the harbor lies in the track of the terrible
East Indian typhoon and, although sheltered on the north shore of a
high island, one of these storms recently sunk nine vessels, sent
twenty-three ashore, seriously damaged twenty-one others, wrought
great destruction among the smaller craft and over a thousand dead
were recovered. Such was the destruction wrought by the September
storm of 1906.
Our steamer did not go to dock but the Nippon Yusen Kaisha's launch
transferred us to a city much resembling Seattle in possessing a
scant footing between a long sea front and high steep mountain
slopes behind. Here cliffs too steep to climb rise from the very
sidewalk and are covered with a great profusion and variety of
ferns, small bamboo, palms, vines, many flowering shrubs, all
interspersed with pine and great banyan trees that do so much toward
adding the beauty of northern landscapes to the tropical features
which reach upward until hidden in a veil of fog that hung, all of
the time we were there, over the city, over the harbor and stretched
beyond Old and New Kowloon.
Hongkong island is some eleven miles long and but two to five miles
wide, while the peak carrying the signal staff rises 1,825 feet
above the streets from which ascends the Peak tramway, where,
hanging from opposite ends of a strong cable, one car rises up the
slope and another descends every fifteen to twenty minutes,
affording communication with business houses below and homes in
beautiful surroundings and a tempered climate above. Extending along
the slopes of the mountains, too, above the city, are very excellent
roads, carefully graded, provided with concrete gutters and bridges,
along which one may travel on foot, on horseback, by ricksha or
sedan chair, but too narrow for carriages. Over one of these we
ascended along one side of Happy Valley, around its head and down
the other side. Only occasionally could we catch glimpses of the
summit through the lifting fog but the views, looking down and
across the city and beyond the harbor with its shipping, and up and
down the many ravines from via-ducts, are among the choicest and
rarest ever made accessible to the residents of any city. It was the
beginning of the migratory season for birds, and trees and shrubbery
thronged with many species.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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