were dismasted or otherwise injured, and the loss of life among the Chinese boat population was very great. The general impression among foreign residents during that dreadful night was that 'the last days of Hongkong seemed to be approaching.' Nevertheless, as soon as the typhoon was over, everybody set to work with unabated energy to repair the damages. The sick were sent on board improvised floating hospitals, the barracks, mat houses, bungalows, godowns, booths and huts were speedily made habitable again. When the typhoon recurved and, during the night of 25th to 26th, again burst over Hongkong, and levelled once more to the ground every frail structure, the residents of Hongkong had learned a valuable lesson: they now commenced to build a new style of godowns, such as should stand a typhoon, and houses which combined with spacious verandahs also strong walls and substantial roofs. There was little loss of life during the two typhoons among the European community. The Chinese boat people were the principal sufferers. Nevertheless His benevolent Majesty, the Emperor of China, rejoiced when he heard the news. Kikung and Eliang, the Viceroy and Governor of Canton, sent a hasty memorial to Peking, stating that at Hongkong innumerable foreign ships had been dashed to pieces, that innumerable foreign soldiers and Chinese traitors had been swept into the sea, that all their tents and matsheds, the new Praya, and so forth, had been utterly annihilated and that the sea was literally covered with corpses. On receipt of this news, the Emperor went forthwith in festive procession to the temple of the dragon god of the seas, and solemnly returned thanks for the destruction of Hongkong. An Imperial Edict, published with rejoicing all over the Empire, also proclaimed the judgment that had fallen on Hongkong, with the same display of inhumanity, contrary to the leading principle of Confucian ethics which declares humaneness to be the essential characteristic of civilized humanity.
This typhoon, by which Captain Elliot and Commodore Bremer were overtaken on their way (in the cutter Louise) from Macao to Hongkong, and themselves shipwrecked and
