atting,
sampans, trim steam launches and various other craft. As the vessel
passes beyond the smelting works and the dry docks it rounds a point and
the beauty of Hongkong is revealed.

The city is built at the foot of a steep hill nearly two thousand feet
in height. Along the crescent harbor front are ranged massive business
buildings with colonaded fronts and rows of windows. Behind the business
section the hills rise so abruptly that many of the streets are seen to
be merely rows of granite stairs. Still farther back are the homes of
Hongkong residents, beautiful stone or brick structures, which look out
upon the busy harbor. With a glass one can make out the cable railroad
which climbs straight up the mountainside for over one thousand feet and
then turns sharply to the right until the station is reached, about
thirteen hundred feet above sea level.

Hongkong differs radically from Yokohama, Tokio, Kobe, Nagasaki or
Manila, because of the blocks of solid, granite-faced buildings that
line its water front, each with its rows of Venetian windows, recessed
in balconies. This is the prevailing architecture for hotels, business
buildings and residences, while dignity is lent to every structure by
the enormous height between stories, the average being from fifteen to
eighteen feet. This impression of loftiness is increased by the use of
the French window, which extends from the floor almost to the ceiling,
all the windows being provided with large transoms.

The feature of Hongkong which impresses the stranger the most vividly is
the great mixture of races in the streets. Here for the first time one
finds the sedan chair, with two or four bearers. It is used largely in
Hongkong for climbing the steep streets which are impossible for the
jinrikisha. The bearers are low-class coolies from the country, whose
rough gait makes riding in a chair the nearest approach to horseback
exercise. The jinrikisha is also largely in evidence, but the bearers
are a great contrast in their rapacious manners to the courteous and
smiling Japanese in all the cities of the Mikado's land.

Queen's road, the main business street of Hongkong, furnishes an
extraordinary spectacle at any hour of the day. The roadway is lined
with shops, while the sidewalks, covered by the verandas of the second
stories of the buildings, form a virtual arcade, protected from the
fierce rays of the sun. These shops are mainly designed to catch the eye
of the forei