purposes. In August, 1862, the Hongkong Office of the British West Indies' emigration agent was closed and the business transferred to Canton, to admit of more searching supervision of the modes in which the coolies were procured. But, owing to this measure, the number of Chinese emigrants, annually shipped from Hongkong, fell from 10,421 in 1862, to 7,809 in 1860, and to 6,607 in 1864. In the year 1863 the number of emigrants leaving Hongkong was equalled by the number of those who returned from abroad. These returning emigrants generally brought considerable quantities of gold or gold dust into the Colony. In the year 1861 one single ship (Minerva) brought from Melbourne 350 Chinese coolies possessing gold of the aggregate value of £43,000. In the same year as many as 2,370 Chinese were shipped, as free emigrants, to India, and emigration to Tahiti commenced as a new venture.
The shipping returns of the year 1861, shewing a decrease of 217,003 tons, as compared with the returns of the preceding year, do not indicate any real falling off of the shipping trade of the Colony. On the contrary, those returns show an increase of 31,660 tons when compared with the returns of 1859. The difference is explained by the extraordinary increase of the shipping business occasioned, in the year 1860, by commissariat, and transport services connected with the war in North China. It may also be noted that the American tonnage decreased in 1861 while British shipping took a proportionate bound in advance, owing to the effects of the Peking Convention which extended the scope of British commerce in China. Owing to the frequency of ships being wrecked on the Pratas Shoals, application had been made in 1860 to the Home Government regarding the erection of lighthouses on those rocks, but the Board of Trade declined (May 2, 1861) to move in the matter.
The somewhat Utopian scheme of connecting Calcutta with Canton and Kowloon by a railway, was brought under the consideration of the Chamber of Commerce (June 30, 1859) by Sir MacDonald Stephenson who subsequently, after the completion of his railway undertakings in India, visited
