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granite quarrying was in progress. The characters probably are the trade-marks of the sub-contractors to whom the quarry owner assigned the different boulders for cutting up.
There were many other 'inscriptions' on and near the No. 1 inscription, but they were all written with ink and brush, not carved, and some were in poetry, but none were recorded by the writer. They were usually patriotic reflections on the fall of the Sung dynasty.
Pottery, etc. found on the site
This falls into three groups:
1. Surface finds on the hill, and three objects found in shallow diggings.
2. Finds from the south-east of the hill, on the beach.
3. Finds, mostly small fragments, from a cutting made through the southern end of the earthwork, apparently by a Government department.
1. Two small pieces of pre- or proto-historic pottery were found. One bore the familiar mat pattern found on most of the hard pre-Han ware in Hong Kong; the other, a thick fragment with a very tough pinkish body, was full of quartz grains: one side seems to have a few grooves and shallow pittings. The material of the body is probably local, and there is no slip or coating.
In a small pit dug for a seedling pine, 20 metres north-west of the rock bearing inscription 1, and 12 metres below the level of its summit, was found a much rusted piece of iron, use uncertain.
Two pottery fragments came from depths of 30 cm. in small cuttings on the west side of the hill: a gray unglazed curving piece like the edge of a candlestick foot, and part of the lip of a thin stoneware bowl with fine pinkish-buff body and gray slip covering the inner surface, but extending less than 1 cm. down the outer: its date could be as early as the T'ang dynasty.
Other surface finds on the hill include two fragments of modern burial jars known as 'Kam T'ap'; two much weathered and probably old pieces of the same kind; a sherd from the edge of a greyish-white porcelain bowl with black floral painting under the glaze of the outer surface, not earlier than Ming; a piece of a large cooking utensil with blackish-brown slip and incised ornament.
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