6.03
232
is aware, is a tongue of land jutting out from the high mountain range which observed that the peninsula & forms, as it were, the Coast barrier of the Sun-on district, and penetrating into the middle of the Hongkong harbour; the point nearest to the Hong Kong shore being distant only four le from the centre of the City of Victoria.
• First ceded to the English by the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, it was thought that the few fishermen and stone cutters who then inhabited this small and barren spot of land could be easily controlled by the Deputy Magistrate of Kowloon, and no express stipulation was therefore made respecting them. But since that date, outlaws and other bad characters having been shut out by the above-mentioned range from the surveillance of the Chinese Government, while it was not interfered with by the British Authorities of Hong Kong, although situated directly under their eyes, because it did not belong to their jurisdiction, took advantage of these circumstances to make it a place of resort for robbers or fugitives or of concealment for thieves of all the Country around.
Marauders in the streets of Hong Kong had only to cross the harbour to Tsim-sha-tsui, and they secured at once not only their own safety but a ready means of disposing of their stolen property. Repeatedly have the British Authorities at