are very hard, and are always shot out of the cart instead of handed down, and not one piece is broken in a load. A magnificent six stoned block was half built during the month in which we remained; another Cosmopolitan Hotel, which was burnt last year, was again re-opened within four months of the catastrophe. The common height for houses is six-story, and the ground floor is usually twenty feet high. Most of the new building are twice, and some three times the height of those adjoining, the streets are all at right angles with each other, and are from fifty to a hundred feet wide.

HAK-KAS.

One of the assertions that it may most unerringly be predicted will be made by a newcomer just landed in Hongkong is, that he can see no difference of any kind in the features of the masses of Chinese with whom he is at once brought in contact; and although, on longer residence, he begins to find it not so utterly impossible as he was at first convinced it must be, to distinguish his "boy" from his "coolie," and either of them from his neighbour's servants, yet a lengthened familiarity with the native style of face is required before the apparent universal likeness begins to resolve itself into a goodly number of distinguishable types. Among the hundred and odd thousand Chinese subjects of Queen Victoria in this Island there are, indeed, distinctions of race as broad as those which sever the Yorkshireman from the man of Somerset, to say nothing of dialects that differ from each other as widely as the rough Northumberland does from the mincing Dorset; but the two principal classes under which the native population may be described, and with which most residents are more or less familiar, through the frequent recurrence of their respective designations in the newspapers, are the Pun-ti and the Hak-ka, or the "people of the country" and the "strangers" or "immigrants." These latter are, if not our hewers of wood and drawers of water, at least the chippers of our granite and the bearers, in many instances, of our chairs. Like the Irish, who are the Hak-kas of Liverpool and New York, of Melbourne and Montreal, to them are allotted the most laborious and least enlivening of employments; and, like the Irish also, they plod on, for the most part happily, in unremitting industry, refreshing themselves now and then with a cheerful fight, and bring up families in enormous numerical disproportion to the catties of rice and salt fish they are able to provide for the expectant hungry stomachs.

On the whole, however, the cheery, hard working Hak-kas enjoy better times under the shadow of Victoria Peak than fall to their lot in many cases among the paddy fields of their fatherland. Although scattered by the million over the greater portion of the adjacent Province of Kwangtung, and differing

from the great bulk of the population only in the fact that their ancestors some hundreds of years ago were natives of the Centre instead of the South of China, (whence the designation of "strangers," by which they are known), the Hak-kas complete the parallel that has been suggested between the Irish and themselves, by suffering the treatment of an alien and uncongenial people, at the hands of the communities among whom they have settled down; and a bloody internecine war, after raging for ten years between the Punti and Hak-ka population of the tract of country westward of Macao, has only recently been terminated by the forced removal from their fields and villages of more than fifty thousand Hak-kas, the remnants of clans that were probably ten times as numerous a few years ago.

Very many of the Hak-kas in Hongkong are refugees who have found their way hither in search of employment, after having been rendered destitute by these hostilities, and this is especially the case with the women, of whom we have a large number stowed away in dark and noisome alleys where the foot of a European never treads, and who earn a precarious livelihood as grass cutters, carriers of earth and rubbish, or by needlework.

In the group of Hak-kas which are the subject of the accompanying illustration one of these patient, industrious women is shewn, and her patched garments and bare, uncramped feet tell a story of poverty, which is only too faithfully reflected in her worn and cheerless face. The object she holds in her left hand may require some explanation before it is accepted as her hat, yet a head covering it certainly is, and one which is as susceptible of as coquettish arrangement by Chinese country lasses as the most elaborate fabric of leghorn straw and rosy ribbon that was ever worn by an Amaryllis before or after the days of Greuze and Sir Joshua Reynolds. The hat of the Chinese peasant-girl might, indeed, furnish a hint for a new "gipsey style" adapted to more fashionable wearers, and it resembles to a great extent the head covering frequently seen in Tyrol and in some parts of Switzerland. It is formed of a disc of plaited bamboo shavings, with a circular space of about half-a-foot in diameter left unfilled in the centre. Over this a piece of coarse blue cloth is stretched, which falls over the rim of the disc, forming a curtain around its entire circumference when worn, effectually shading the face. The central hole enables the hat to be steadied on the top of the head.

The scale of the figures photographed does not admit of such minute delineation as would enable us to detect in the living original, one of the most noticeable characteristics of the Hak-ka women, namely, the heavy ear-rings of brass, sometimes three or four inches in length, but curved in not ungraceful forms, with which even the poorest grass-cutter generally manages to decorate herself. By the ear-rings alone an expert connoisseur would be able to assign at least three Chinese country women out of five to the District of which they are natives, and there is even a local fashion in bangles, of which one is seen gleaming white (though it is probably but a poor piece of vitrified ware, and

not the precious jade stone) on the arm of the woman who is resting upon the ladder.

The men and lads who constitute the remainder of the group are of the ordinary type of the Hak-kas who do the rough work of the Colony, and who look as if they, at least, were in no want for the necessaries of life. The young gamin on the ladder looks alert and merry enough, as most of the Hongkong street boys are, having picked up a dash of European bristerousness which distinguishes them noticeably from their cousins at Canton; but the half-roguish, half-frightened face of the urchin whose bare legs peep from the scanty shelter of his solitary garment (barring an enormous hat, the gift perhaps of some charitable sailor), as he stands beside his mother, renders him the most attractive figure in the group. Small as he is, we may depend upon it, he is beginning to contribute toward his own support, by helping his mother in carrying loads, by chipping bamboo splints for joss-stick makers, or by some similar occupation. He will, unless exceptionally unlucky, pick up a bit of schooling too as he grows up, and will learn from his mother the traditionary history of his ancestral clan and its distinguished members.

A branch of the population akin to, yet distinct from the Hak-kas, bears the name of Hok-lo, which points to the Province of Fu-kien as their original home. They are chiefly given to sea-faring pursuits, while the Hak-kas are more especially an agricultural people. Very many of the pirates who trouble these waters belong to the Hok-lo race.

PASSING EVENTS.

THE following comic account of the process by which the Chinese Ambassador General was appointed to the post he holds, is extracted from an official despatch, written by Mr. Burlinghame himself, to the American Government:

"I was on the Percipy, proceeding to the treaty ports of China to ascertain what changes our citizens desired to have made in the treaties, provided a revision should be determined upon, after which it was my intention to resign and go home. The knowledge of this coming to the Chinese, Prince Kung gave a farewell dinner, at which great regret was expressed at my resolution to leave China, and urgent requests made that I would, like Sir Frederick Bruce, state China's difficulties, and inform the Treaty Powers of their sincere desire to be friendly and progressive. This I cheerfully promised to do. During the conversation Wensiung, a leading man of the empire, said"Why will you not represent us officially?" I repulsed the suggestion playfully, and the conversation passed to other topics. Subsequently I was in