Collections : [Yale University -Yale Center for British Art]

This representation illustrates the fashion of British colonial modes of transport by the early 1850s. Chinese figures carry a palanquin, while a horse-drawn carriage also charges by. Happy Valley was the site of a British racecourse and a Protestant Cemetery (see watercolor "11").

The Hong Kong Cemetery (also known as the Protestant Cemetery and the Colonial Cemetery) was opposite the oldest racecourse in Hong Kong in Happy Valley, and in the middle of a line of cemeteries that included the Roman Catholic cemetery (founded 1848) and later Islamic cemetery (1870). In 1853 (a year after this view), the captain and crew of the HMS Cleopatra erected a monument to Scottish trader and explorer Robert Burns, grandson of the poet, who was killed by pirates of the Tunku River (for which the Cleopatra was dispatched to avenge, see watercolors '25' and '27').

Since the Song Dynasty, ocean-going junks of this size made trips to Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.

Jardine & Matheson Co. were the most powerful opium merchants in Hong Kong. They founded their company in 1832, grew rapidly by exporting tea and silk to England, and by smuggling opium. They purchased land in the Causeway area when Britain acquired Hong Kong after the Treaty of Nanking, at the conclusion of the first opium war. Porcher's journal describes the "patent slip" at Jardine's Establishment, where "ships of about 500 tons… can be hauled up" and repaired (6). A drawing of the purchase for hauling the vessels is included on page 7 (diary).

"Joss House" was the derogatory term used by the British to refer to Chinese temples. The word "Joss" was derived from the Portuguese deos or God, adapted in the pidgin trading language at Chinese ports (Whitworth 463-464). Tai Ping Shan means "peace hill" and was named after the area's peaceful settlement after the conclusion of an 1810 sea battle between pirates and Qing Dynasty warships. This peace was interrupted when British warships arrived, and the street became a traditional Chinese enclave in the Victoria Peak region otherwise dominated by the British garrison. Taoist, Confucian and Buddhist worshippers happily co-mingled along the street, and Porcher's view likely depicts the temple devoted to "Jai Kung", or "poor man's Buddha", constructed in 1851 as a temporary repository for the stone tablets of Hong Kong's deceased, whose remains were far from their ancestral burial grounds. A statue of the god Tai Chong Wong presided over the souls of the deceased (Ingham 107-109).

Shek-Pai-Wan is a bay between Hong Kong and Aberdeen Island. The British were initially attracted to waterfall at Aberdeen because it was a source of fresh water supply. A short journey from Aberdeen, Hap-Lee-Chow (Ap Lei Chau Island) was an important maritime center. Temples (called "Joss Houses" by the British) were important places of prayer for local fishermen, who would give offerings to ensure plentiful catches (Ingham 142).

In his diary, Porcher describes the British barracks built on the 'Checkchu' (or 'Check-chow') peninsula (called Stanley) and at Siwan: "[A]fter a certain time, all the English troops were obliged to be called in in consequence of both places turning out so unhealthy, on account of the malaria rising from the valleys, over which both stations had been built, at present 12 and 15 men of the Ceylon Rifles under the command of Native Officers, having been left there" (Diary 3).