probably only Tsimsbatsui). Mr. Bingbam also states that, when the Cbuenpi Treaty was disavowed by the Imperial Government, it was seized by the British troops 'by right of conquest,' a garrison being kept in 'Fort Victoria' (probably on the site of the present Barracks), where many commissariat and other stores were deposited.
During the course of February, 1841, numerous parties of British and foreign merchants and missionaries came over from Macao to prospect the capabilities of Hongkong and to select sites for warehouses and residences. By the end of March and the beginning of April, 1841, shanties, labourers' matsheds, roughly-built store-houses (called godowns), Chinese shop-keepers' booths, European bungalows and houses of all descriptions began to rise up. The first buildings erected in Hongkong are said (on the evidence of Mr. W. Rawson) to have been the so-called Albany godowns (near Spring Gardens) of Lindsay & Co. Next rose up the buildings at East Point, where Jardine, Matheson & Co. established themselves. Later on buildings were erected in the Happy Valley and here and there along the hill side as far as the present centre of the town. While the Military and Naval Authorities commenced settling at West Point, erecting cantonments on the hill side (on the site of the present Reformatory and later on above Fairlea) and large Naval Stores (near the shore in the neighbourhood of the present Gas Company's premises), the Happy Valley was at first intended by British merchants for the principal business centre. However, the prejudices of the Chinese merchants against the Fungshui (geomantic aspects) of the Happy Valley and the peculiarly malignant fever which emptied every European house in that neighbourhood almost as soon as it was tenanted, caused the business settlement to move gradually westwards. Hill sites, freely exposed towards the South-west and South-east, as well as to the North, were soon discovered as being less subject to the worst type of malarial fever, and were accordingly studded with frail European houses mostly covered at first with palm-leaves. A number of wooden houses were imported from
