Page 341 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

327.

follow them. The wife of one missionary wrote home that summer:

"It is our intention to go directly to the first place taken by

the English, .and there to teach the Chinese, and as we trust
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unmolestedly." Such an opportunity did not materialize in 1840,

as the English did not maintain their hold on any port. In

1841 the missionaries concentrated on moving the Morrison

School to Hong Kong, recently occupied by the English. Bridgman,

extremely pleased with the prospect of establishing the entire

mission at Hong Kong, wrote to the American Board: "Security

for property and persons, now generally enjoyed under christian

governments, will ere long be also enjoyed here. 11 At Hong Kong

"the British will continue to enjoy and give full protection,
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secure from the influence of Chinese officers.11 To Bridg-man,

the English appeared to have decided to forego the idea of

returning to Canton. Hong Kong was an island on the south­

eastern side at the mouth of the Pearl River, as Macao lay on

the southwestern side. The island, which the English occupied

with relative ease, was "about seven miles long by five miles

wide, and almost one series of sterile hills with few intervals."

Its major feature was its harbor, which was "about a mile and

a half wide" and had "long been known as the best on this part

of the coast." On the mainland across the harbor of the unin-

habited island lay the Chinese village of Kanlung (Kowloon).

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Letter, H. Shuck to her father, Jul. 10, 1840, in Jeter,
Memoir of Henrietta Shuck, p. 163. Shuck accompanied her husband
Jehu Lewis Shuck as the first Baptist missionaries to China. They
arrived in 1836 and settled at Macao, where Rev. Shuck studied
Chinese� In 1841 they moved to Hong Kong to help establish a
Baptist mission there. After a leave of absence in 1845-47, the
Shucks returned to China, this time working at Shanghai.
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Letter, E.C. Bridqman to American Board of Commissioners,
Ju 1 . 1, 1841,in Missionary Herald, XXXVIII, 3 (March 1842), 100.