eight Societies: the London Missionary Society, the Nether- lands Mission, the American Board, the American Baptists, the American Episcopalians, the Church Missionary Society, the American Presbyterians, and the Morrison Educational Society.
Period of the Ports, 1842–1860
With the signing of the Treaty of Nanking and the opening of the five treaty ports, missionary work entered upon an entirely new era. At the time of Morrison's death there had been only two missionaries residing in China Proper, Messrs. Bridgman and Wells -Williams, both of the American Board. Dr. Parker and the Eev. Edwin Stevens both reached Canton in 1834, though the latter died in 1837.
With the opening of the treaty ports there was an immediate move forward. Messrs. Roberts and Shuck of the American Baptist Mission appear to have been the first to settle at Hongkong, moving there in 1842. In the following year the London Missionary Society transferred its printing press and its Anglo-Chinese College to that colony. Dr. Legge, who had been in Malacca since 1839, being its Principal. For the next thirty-four years, until his appointment as Professor of Chinese at Oxford, Dr. Legge continued his invaluable labours, placing the whole world, and the missionary body especially, under a lasting obligation to him for his translations and commentaries on the Chinese classics. Among his colleagues in the L.M.S. at Hongkong must be mentioned Drs. Chalmers and Hobson.
Among the other Societies represented at Hongkong during this period were the Church Missionary Society temporarily;[1] the Basel Missionary Society, which commenced work on the island in 1847; and the Rhenish
- ↑ Bishop Smith of Hongkong first went out in connection with the C.M.S. in 1844, but his health failing, he had to return home after two years' service. He was consecrated Bishop of Victoria, Hongkong, in 1849.
