Appendix J.
REPORT ON THE NEW TERRITORIES FOR THE YEAR 1927.
A.-NORTHERN DISTRICT.
I. STAFF.
Mr. J. A. Fraser continued in charge throughout the year. Mr. W. G. Routley, junior land bailiff returning from leave in February, acted as senior land bailiff in the absence of Mr. G. J. Chambers from 25th June to the end of the year. Revenue Officer H. V. Pearse (attached from I. & E. Dept.) acted as junior bailiff from June to October.
II. MAGISTRACY.
Table A shows the number of cases heard by the District Officer sitting as Police Magistrate and as Judge of the Small Debts Court.
There was a marked decrease in the number of serious offences in the latter half of the year. The most noteworthy was an attempt on a ferry-junk which was commandeered by armed men and taken out of its course to Tolo Channel, with passengers confined in the hold. One of these, an elderly Chinese, showed rare coolness and initiative. Obtaining access to the deck of the junk about dusk on a slight pretext, he attracted the attention of an approaching police launch by jumping overboard, and thus secured the arrest of the offenders, who were subsequently committed, tried and sentenced.
Prompt police action in investigating offences committed near the Northern frontier, together with a continuous patrol of the approaches to British Shataukok have reduced "border outrages" to a negligible minimum. An unfortunate result of the troubled conditions across the frontier is the increased number of fraudulent marriages and adoptions, which in some cases amount to kidnapping, to and even from the Territory, and of which a few only come to light. Cases of damage to trees centred round Sheung Shui and Ts'ung Pak Long, and were mainly the result of attempts to discourage depredations on the very tempting forestry reserves in that neighbourhood.
The number of small debts cases exceeds the average for the past five years by about two hundred per cent. It would however be wrong to consider this abnormal: the reverse is the