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21 Apr 59 Peter Hong Kong Mother 5, Hyde Park Place West ______________________________________________________________________________________________

Hong Kong, 21 April

59

My dear Mother

As we do not expect the mail in this time before this leaves, I am afraid this will be but a very short letter.

The great event, I think – almost the only event since last I wrote – has been the arrival of a vessel which we chartered to go to Japan & buy the whole place up, which is a matter very easily done. Independent of what attaches to the house, the Captain has a tremendous stock in trade which he sells at fabulous prices. All our people are going heavily into them as specs which I think is foolish as the prices he asks are something fabulous.

I have bought a few little things for my room & have some very peculiar & rather pretty woollen scarfs which I shall send you home at Christmas. These scarfs are really extremely curious. The Capt. has lots of little Japanese dogs which are funny little things, some of them not larger than half this sheet of paper & would be very pretty only that they have all such short turn-up noses. They come up & smell you & then go away with their noses turned up, just as if they had a supreme contempt for you.

Among other things, he has a salamander. Not a salamander like mine – but one which, while it resembles it in form, is between 4 & 5 feet long. This he declares to be 800 years old & who shall say it isn’t. He also declares it will live in fire but declines for the present putting it in. I told him that I had one, but a little smaller, & that people told me it would live in fire. But that all I could say was that it didn’t live very long in spirits of wine.

Our steamer the ‘Hellespont’* has just gone there for the second time, only they keep it so secret that nobody knows when she is going. The Capt. describes the place as a little fairy land. Every thing is so clean he says, even the people, which is quite a treat after the Chinese who only wash themselves once a year, & then only their face & hands. In Nagasaki, he says, every morning they bring great tubs out into the street, strip & get in – right before everybody; men, women & children all together.

Fancy seeing a whole street washing themselves in this manner. Happy innocence, it must indeed be fairy land.

A kiss to little Helen

Your affect. Son

Peter G. Laurie

Tell my Father he should enquire where Capt Crockett is. He went home 3 mos. ago to build a new steamer (to boat creee-ation as the Yankees say). He will be bringing her out almost directly & will be happy to bring anything to me.

I want you to send me if you can by the steamer one or two scotch terriers. Try & get me one even if you have to buy it.

* Hellespont – Named after the 4½ km wide straits, now called the Dardanelles, which separate Europe from Asia. In Greek mythology, Lenader would swim nightly to his beloved Hero across this stretch of water. The poet, Lord Byron became the first known person to swim the Hellespont in 1810. Today, local Rotarians organise the Sahap Tarzi Swimming Contest which takes place annually on Victory Day, 30th August, to commemorate Turkey’s successful defeat of a Greek invasion in 1922