[
    {
        "id": 205529,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1968",
        "page_number": 71,
        "title": "RAS-1968",
        "content_text": "66\n\nH. A. RYDINGS\n\n4 G. H. Preble, The opening of Japan; a diary of discovery in the Far East, 1853-1856, ed. by B. Szczesniak, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1962, p. 58.\n\n5 By 1867 Hong Kong was minting its own dollars. The English gold sovereign was quoted at this time at HK$4.60.\n\n6 From the article on \"The City Hall\" in V. H. G. Jarrett, op. cit.\n\n7 Twentieth century impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other treaty ports of China, ed. by A. Wright and H. A. Cartwright, London, Lloyd's Greater Britain Publ. Co., 1908, p. 162.\n\n8 D. Scott, \"The Morrison Library”, JHKBRAS, vol. 1, 1960-61, pp. 50-67.\n\n9 J. W. Norton-Kyshe, The history of the laws and courts of Hongkong, London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1898, vol. II, p. 252.\n\n10 ibid., vol. II, p. 369.\n\n11 ibid., vol. II, p. 429.\n\n12 ibid., vol. II, p. 430.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207059,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1974",
        "page_number": 130,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "124\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nLocal people were placed in a difficult position when pirates or, in periods when China was at war with Britain and her allies, imperial war junks occupied their anchorages. At least two such instances occurred in the 1850s. In February 1857 two British vessels attacked war junks at the Chinese naval anchorage of Tung Chung on Lantau where there was also a fort and permanent garrison. The local population which had probably taken no part in the fighting had to make its peace with the squadron the day after it had burned the junks and dismantled some of the batteries on shore. An offering of two bullocks and some pigs, was sent with a letter from the elders begging the commander to spare their settlement.1 The same thing happened at Tai O, also on Lantau, in November 1854, when an expedition was sent to deal with pirate junks that had fired on the chartered steamer Queen, an American naval vessel. After shelling and an attack by the boats of the squadron, the pirate junks and storehouses were destroyed. An American naval officer, Lieutenant G. H. Preble, captured a pirate flag, inscribed with characters which, he wrote, 'state it is the flag of Lue-ming-suy-ming of the Hong Shing-tong Company, Chief of the Sea Squadron, and that he takes from the rich and not from the poor, and his flag can fly anywhere'. Local people did not see him in quite this light, for Preble records that ‘no sooner had we destroyed the piratical vessels, than a large fleet of fishing junks came into the Bay rejoicing and anchored'. These persons had to drive off a pirate attempt to take and make off in their boats during the night. The next morning a deputation of the chief men of the village came on board his steamer 'with a present of chickens, pork, fish, etc.'2\n\nIn this period, as at an earlier time, villagers took what measures they could to protect themselves from such villains. In the larger places like Cheung Chau, it was apparently possible for local people to prevent their being taken over by pirates as had happened at Tai O. As I have described in another place, their leaders established a Security Bureau in the early 1850s and repaired it when trouble again threatened some years later. In the villages\n\n1 Illustrated London News, 9th and 16th May 1857, pp. 463, 473-474. 2 Szczesniak, pp. 262-266. Another account of this expedition is given in Tronson, pp. 61-62. He calls the place 'Tyhoo', and Preble, 'Tyho'.\n\n3 Hayes 1963. Cheung Chau itself had previously been thought to harbour pirates; see CO129/6, No. 26 of 21 June 1844, in PRO London.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 210819,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1986",
        "page_number": 170,
        "title": "RAS-1986",
        "content_text": "153\n\nwondered how much of that soft musical quality was due to him and how much inherent in that unknown tongue.\n\nWilliam Hunter wrote two books on his China days, Bits of Old China published in 1855, and The Fan Kwai at Canton, in 1882. Both contain valuable and interesting information on the relationship between Chinese and foreign traders at Canton in the first half of the 19th century.\n\nW. C. Hunter was married twice. His first wife was of a Virginia family noted for its high-spirited and beautiful girls, or at least this is the impression drawn from remarks made by Lieutenant (later Rear-Admiral) G. H. Preble. Preble was a frequent guest of the Hunter family at Canton. One sister, Preble states, gained notoriety by eloping, which so devastated a former lover that he committed suicide. Another sister also eloped but with less tragic consequences.\n\nPreble in repeating this gossip said that Mrs. Hunter was “quite a different person” from her sisters, and though she had had five or six children by the time he had met her \"no one would have guessed it.\" After her death, her husband married an American woman in Paris in 1876.\n\nThe homesick American lieutenant enjoyed his visits in the Hunter home and wrote to his wife about them. In 1854 he mentioned the international gastronomic delicacies he enjoyed at one of their small dinner parties—shark's fin soup, and beche de mer stew, fresh pineapple, baked mango tarts and English Yarmouth bloaters.\n\nOn another evening he was much impressed with the new-fangled stereopticon kept in the Hunter's parlour for the amusement of their guests. He described it to his wife as \"a couple of daguerreotypes fitted or mounted with a stereoscope attachment so that seen through it only one image was shown, and every part stood out with the fulness of a statue, and the perfection of life petrified.\"\n\nDuring the 1840s and 1850s Hunter divided his time between",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063",
        "rank": 0
    }
]