# ARTICLES
# BESIDE THE YAMEN: NGA TSIN WAI VILLAGE
# P.H. HASE
## Topography and Early History of the Area
The north-east part of the Kowloon Peninsula was, before it became developed as part of the City, a broad flat plain, well watered by a series of streams coming down from the hills, and generally fertile. The coastline (running close to today's Prince Edward Road) was fronted by shallow water, with substantial areas of tidal marsh and mud flats offshore. The area was closed in by hills on all sides except that facing the sea: these hills were high and steep to the north and east, more broken and lower to the west and south, but everywhere formed a clear boundary to the area (see Map 1).
The first settlement of Han Chinese in this plain probably dates from the early second century BC. During this period (206-111 BC), the Kwangtung area formed a separate Empire, that of the Nanyueh (南越), centred on Canton. It is known that the Nanyueh Emperors established a Salt Monopoly within their Empire, and it is very likely (although there are no contemporary written records to substantiate this) that a Salt Sub-Intendancy office was founded at Kowloon City shortly after 200 BC, to supervise salt-fields established along the shores of Kowloon Bay and in Mirs Bay, supervised by a Salt Intendant whose office was probably at Nam Tau (Nantou, 南頭), just outside the area of today's New Territories, on Deep Bay2. The Salt Intendants and their subordinates all had garrisons of soldiers, to stop salt-smuggling, and Kowloon City would have become a military post from the date that it became a Salt Monopoly centre. The great tomb at Lei Cheng Uk, which dates to the Nanyueh period, is certainly that of a senior Nanyueh official, and the only senior officials of the Nanyueh at all likely to have been stationed in the Kowloon City area at that date would have been salt officials supervising salt-fields in the Kowloon City area.
While there is no specific documentary evidence of salt-working in the Kowloon City area as early as the Nanyueh, a record from AD 265 specifically mentions salt-officials active in the general area east