GREAT WORLD PORT.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 2 August 1913, Page 12

GREAT WORLD PORT.

THE EVOLUTION OF HONG KONG. The story of the amazing development and commercial activtiy of the colony of Hong Kong (writes a correspondent of the Times) is one of the romances of the British Empire. The little island, situated at the mouth ol the Canton River, was seventy years ago a granite rock, the refuge of a few pirates. The occupation by the Briitsh led to a transformation which the most sanguine of that time might well have said was impossible. Our far-seeing fellow-countrymen in the East selected the barren island in preference to other more attractive places because of the magnificent harbor which it commands. It was the instinct of a maritime people, and time has move than justified those pioneer* of Empire. After the occupation there began that great struggle with nature which is at once the pride and inspiration of British colonists in China. The deadly malaria swept away whole regiments —the very name Hong Kong became associated with death. None of the little children born to Europeans survived the diseases of the tropics, and but few of the adults in those first sad years came back to their own country, A weaker race must have given up the struggle. • But the island was an outpost of Empire; to-day it is one of the greatest ports in the world, the clearing-house of a hemisphere. Malaria has been fought and almost conquered. Reclamation work and afforestation have utterly transformed the physical features of the place, and now the visitor see. set in the Eastern sea a colony which spells to the nation near it equity, security, and commercial development.