Friends, this is a Muirhead`s Mysteries Extra dedicated to Jon and Corinna`s memory of Biggles.
I`ve found a few interesting Hong Kong items over the last week or so in addition to what I found in Oxford last weekend.
There is a mention of a “black monkey” as a pet in S. Bard`s `Voices From the Past. Hong Kong 1842-1918 (1) but unfortunately I didn`t make a note of the exact date but I`m pretty sure it was around the time of World War 1. As far as I know there have never been any all black monkeys in Hong Kong. Anyone know about this?
The Hong Kong Telegraph of March 23rd 1911(2) reported porpoises in Hong Kong harbour whilst the same newspaper of May 13th 1914 (3) covered the story of a 23ft whale in Tolo Harbour. Tolo Harbour is on the eastern side of the New Territories.
And now this completely different story I found in The China Mail of December 16th 1931:
THE SEA GIVES UP A JOKE
Year-Old Message In A 30-Year-Old Bottle
“After being in the sea for thirty years, and perhaps embedded for long periods in ice, a bottle dropped Overboard by the Baldwin-Ziegler Polar expedition (which returned to Norway in 1902), has been found at Aith, Shetland Islands.”
This is the opening chapter of a little romance of the sea that went wrong, for later news shows that Shetland got excited too soon. The bottle, true enough, had originally to the expedition of thirty years ago, but when opened it was found to contain a message from a Danish expedition sent to East Greenland last year.
This expedition has apparently been using drift bottles made for the explorers of thirty years ago.(4)
1 S.Bard Voices from the Past Hong Kong 1842-1918 Hong Kong University Press 2002
2 S. Bard Ibid p.259
3 Ibid p.310
4 The China Mail Dec. 16th 1931 p.9
U2 A SORT OF HOMECOMING
And you know its time to go
Through the sleet and driving snow
Across the fields of mourning
Lights in the distance
And you hunger for the time
Time to heal, desire, time
And your earth moves beneath
Your own dream landscape…
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