“从鼓浪屿最顶峰欣赏厦门商港宽阔的景色， 你绝对想不到有什么比它更怡人美妙和生动了。我脚下的这个深水港道泊满了各种船只。小岛的城郊是一片狭长的海角， 向远处延伸。再远处就是另外一条航道， 背后是宏伟的花岗岩山脉， 把海港与大陆分开……”

       ——阿罗姆， 1843年

    Nothing can be imagined more pleasing, picturesque and animated than the prospect of the vast mercantile harbor from the heights of Ko-long-soo. The deep channel, crowded with junks, is at the observer’s feet; the narrow promontory, forming a chief suburb, projects beyond; further still is the second passage, backed by those noble hills of granite which separate the marine district from the mainland.

    The site and scenery of this celebrated entrepot is a panorama of exquisite loveliness... The eye ranges over the low-lying city with its embattled walls; the widespread suburbs with their countless cottages; beyond these, again, to the land-locked cove, dotted with busy merchantmen, there riding securely from very breath of wind. Above the waters of the inner bay, which closely resemble an inland lake, rises a noble chain of mountains, dentate in outline, and granite in structure. Ko-long-soo, interposed between the outward ocean and this picturesque basin, acts as a natural and most efficient breakwater, imparting such entire and constant placidity to its surface, that vessels may lie here at all seasons regardless of the weather, biding their time for unfurling the sails; and transit from shore to shore by boats of tiny tonnage, is never attended with risk or interruption.    

    -- Thomas Allom， 1843

    English artist and architect