The opening of the gold-fields in the Sacramento valley in 1848 and the organisation of the new State of California in 1850 caused a new line of commerce to connect Hongkong with San Francisco. It commenced (July, 1849) with large orders for slop clothes and wooden houses (shipped in frame) which were made in Hongkong. Next, Chinese artizans were sent to California to set up those houses. These were followed by an annually increasing stream of Chinese emigrants embarking at Hongkong for San Francisco and a steadily developing trade in all sorts of articles. In the year 1851 forty-four vessels left Hongkong for California and this line of connection has been maintained ever since.
In December, 1848, a few American whalers put into Hongkong to refit and were so pleased with the resources of the Colony that for many years after they repeated their visits in increasing numbers. Thirteen such vessels arrived at the close of the year 1849. Between December 1850 and March 1851, fifteen vessels arrived laden with oil, of which a considerable portion was shipped in British bottoms to England under the navigation laws. As each of these vessels spent about £500 in the Colony, their visits were hailed with satisfaction, apart from the incipient oil trade connected with them. During the next season as many as 37 whalers arrived (December 2, 1851 to February 21, 1852) with 616,203 gallons of oil, of which however only a small portion was shipped from Hongkong to London.
Coolie emigration to Peru and Cuba, though chiefly conducted at Macao, because the crimping and kidnapping system connected with it would not have been tolerated in Hongkong, benefitted the Colony at first to some extent (in 1852). But the frequent mutinies which occurred among the coolies shipped on that system soon caused British skippers to eschew the Peruvian coolie trade. Properly regulated coolie emigration to Guiana commenced in 1853 under the direction of Mr. J. Gardiner Austin, the Immigration Agent-General of the Government of British Guiana. Emigration to Australia commenced in a small
