THREE:Mr Silverdale clasped his hands together.
THREE:"Not a great distance from the five-storied pagoda we saw the leper hospital, where the unfortunate people who suffer from leprosy are compelled to live, and soon to die. The sight was a horrible one, and we did not want to stay long among the sufferers. We had expected to find a large[Pg 414] building, like a hospital in America, but instead of this there were several small buildings, grouped together in a little village, some of the houses having garden patches near them. The people were lying or sitting around in the sun, and some few of them were at work in the gardens. The most were not able to do anything, as they were suffering from the disease, which was slowly killing or crippling them.It was easy to see out of the depths of futilities that Mrs Keeling was pleased, and her husband retired to his dressing-room and shut the door on her raptures.
THREE:At the highest point of the mountainabout eighteen hundred feet above the water-levelthere is a signal-station, where all vessels coming into port are announced by means of flags. Our friends were carried along a zigzag road to this station, the coolies stopping every few minutes to rest from the fatigue of ascending a steep road with a burden on their shoulders. At the station they had a view extending a long distance out to sea and over the coast of China, and the mountain was so nearly perpendicular that it seemed as if they could toss a penny on the town or into the harbor. Fred tried it, and so did Frank; but after throwing away several ounces of copper, and finding they only went a short distance, they abandoned the experiment. They returned well satisfied with the excursion, and agreed that no one who visits Hong-kong should omit the journey to the top of the mountain.