Along the ridge the road passes by large and well‐built villas, barracks, the Peak Club, a church, and many boarding‐houses. The European inhabitants of Hong Kong are rapidly abandoning the lower levels and taking up their residence here, where the climate, with its cool and refreshing breezes, is delightful in the long summer when Victoria swelters in tropical heat. During the rainy season, however, the Peak is continually shrouded in damp mists; and fires are required to keep rooms and spare garments dry. The saying in Hong Kong is: “If you live on the Peak your clothes rot; if in Victoria _you_ do. Choose which you value more and take up your habitation accordingly.” The cable tramway is a comparatively recent institution; so that when the houses on the summit were being built all the materials had to be carried by coolies up a steep, zigzagging road from below. Even now most of the supplies for the dwellers on the heights are brought up in the same primitive and laborious fashion. In the morning the trams are crowded with European merchants, bankers, solicitors and their clerks, descending to their offices in the city. In the afternoon they are filled with the gay butterflies of society going up or down to pay calls, shop, or play tennis and croquet at the Ladies’ Recreation Ground, half‐way between the Peak and Victoria. The red coats of British soldiers are seen in the cars after parade hours or at night, when they are hurrying back to barracks before tattoo. The harbour of Hong Kong is remarkable for the large “floating population” of Chinese, who live in sampans and seldom go ashore except to purchase provisions. Their boats are small, generally not twenty feet in length, with a single mast, decked, and provided with a small well, covered with a hood, where passengers sit. Under the planking of the deck, in a tiny space without ventilation, with only room to lie prone, the crew—consisting, perhaps, of a dozen men, women, and children—sleep. Their cooking is done with a brazier or wood fire placed on a flat stone in the bows. The children tumble about the deck unconcernedly in the roughest weather. The smaller ones are occasionally tied to the mast to prevent them from falling overboard. The babies are bound in a bundle behind the shoulders of the mothers, who pull their oars or hoist and lower the sail with their burdens fastened on to them. Thus they live, thus they die; never sleeping on land until their corpses are brought ashore to be buried amid much exploding of crackers and burning of joss‐sticks.