In May of 1849 four Catholic Sisters left the familiar walls of their convent in Chartres and embarked on a sea voyage halfway across the world to a tiny fever-infested island. Sailing into Hong Kong, locals noted their calm countenance and strange black and white habit. Talk of the Sisters mounted when they established themselves not in punkha-cooled accommodation, but on a humble hillside away from the city centre. The Sisters were thus among the first to establish their Catholic Order of St Paul's in an abandoned cotton mill in Causeway Bay.