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the country to the South of Canton and on the net-work of water-ways of which Canton may be considered the centre.
What are styled "piracies", but which may be more properly described as gang-robberies, brigandage and blackmailing, are of almost daily occurrence on the rivers and creeks, while clan fights and armed defiance of the authorities, not amounting to actual rebellion, are rife in almost every direction.
The authorities from various causes do not deal effectually with this outrageous state of affairs.
One, and in my opinion one of the chief reasons why they fail to put down all this lawlessness, is the fact that the persons concerned are to all intents and purposes as well armed and much more numerous than any force the Provincial Government, without costly, strenuous and long continued efforts, can bring to bear against them.
There is no question whatever that the foreign arms of precision, rifles, revolvers and pistols with which the criminal portion of the population is armed, and the ammunition with which it is supplied, come, if not directly, at any rate in the first instance from the Colony of Hongkong. No doubt much of the munitions of WELI