When the British settled down to the business of governing their new colony, they collided at every turn with the language barrier. Except for a few conscientious missionaries and a minuscule number of lay scholars, the British were wholly ignorant of Cantonese, the prevailing Hong Kong tongue, and they were loftily disinclined to learn it. The extremes to which this arrogant insularity sometimes went were demonstrated by Governor Samuel George Bonham (1848-1854), who denied promotions to those subordinates who learned Chinese; he felt that the language was injurious to the mind, robbing it of common sense. In other respects, Governor Bonham was not so benighted as his linguistic convictions would indicate. Nor was he alone in his attitude toward the Chinese people; Governor Hercules Robinson (1859-1865) once wrote that it was his constant endeavor to “preserve the European and American community from the injury and inconvenience of intermixture” with the Chinese population. Since all government business was (and continues to be) conducted in English, British officials frequently had to rely on Portuguese interpreters who had moved to Hong Kong from Macao. The Portuguese, facile linguists and unburdened by delusions of racial superiority, filled the role admirably. But in the colony courts, the simple task of swearing a witness in presented obstacles even to the best interpreters. Having never sworn an oath in the English fashion, the Chinese viewed it as just one more instance of outlandish mumbo-jumbo. At first the English tried cutting off a rooster’s head as a testament of the witness’s intention to tell the truth; then an earthenware bowl was broken to signify the same thing. A yellow paper inscribed with oaths or the name of the witness was burned in court as another form of swearing-in. Governor Bonham instituted a direct oral affirmation in 1852, but the complications that ensued must have intensified his conviction that the Chinese language was an insult to logic. If a defendant were asked, “Do you plead guilty?” the question was rendered in colloquial Cantonese as “You yes or no not guilty?” If the respondent answered “Yes, I am not guilty,” it could mean either “Not Guilty” or “Guilty.” Somehow the oaths were sworn, but not without a certain despair among the court attendants.