107
famous for the 8½ tons of Persian opium found there about 1921, guarded by an armed sampan and hidden in a cave. Kau Yi Chau (“Armchair Island") is larger and higher. The sea all round is polluted with Hong Kong refuse tipped from sanitary barges.
Further on to the east is Lamma: also rendered "Nam A” ("Southern Forked Island”). This is an island of remarkable shape. Its best harbour is in the north-west, Yung Shu Wan ("Banyan Tree Bay"): all the others have defects: Luk Chau Wan ("Deer Island Bay"), Sokkwu Wan ("Dragnet Bay") or Picnic Bay, and Tung O (“East Haven”) are all too exposed in winter, Tai Wan ("Big Bay") and the other landing places on the west coast are surf-beaten in summer, and Tung O is more liberally supplied with reefs than any other bay in the islands except Ma Wan. Sham Wan ("Deep Bay"), a beautiful, deep, drowned valley, gets the swell nearly all the year round; besides, there is hardly any cultivated land by it. Hence Yung Shu Wan, with well-watered plains, villages, and low hills behind it, is the island's only commercial harbour: it has a sampan ferry to Aberdeen, the island's real commercial centre.
Lamma specialises in orchards, chiefly of papaya; water buffaloes, tigers and other evil beasts are unknown there, and the island seems prosperous, though animal diseases and shortage of water often cause losses. An interesting point is that some of the land here was used as endowments for what we would call "fellowships" for scholars in Namtau under the old order of things.
Since 1932 Lamma has attained much fame as the leading site of the prehistoric culture of the South China coast, as the result of my finding large quantities of ancient pottery in good condition, and the later researches of Father Finn, who published his results in detail in the "Hong Kong Naturalist".25 The earliest glazed pottery in China comes from here. Another site nearby has rougher, more primitive objects than the bronzes and ornaments of Tai Wan; and a hill near Yung Shu Wan forms a third site closely related to the other two. At least four other sites have been found on the island, besides stone axes on the hills. The modern population probably does not exceed 1,000,