[
    {
        "id": 204838,
        "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-1964",
        "page_number": 141,
        "title": "RAS-1964",
        "content_text": "116\n\nCRANMER-BYNG AND SHEPHERD\n\nwhich lies in the mouth of the Pearl River estuary between Macao and Castle Peak on the opposite headland. However, during the south-west monsoons the anchorages of Kapsuimun門 pq 29, and Hong Kong were used because they provided greater protection. The Kapsuimun anchorage was situated south of Ma Wan island and sheltered to the west by the headland of Lantao and to the east by Tsing I island. Because of the smuggling of opium from depot ships at these outer anchorages the capabilities of the anchorages off Lantao island and between Hong Kong island and Kowloon on the mainland became thoroughly known to British merchants and sea captains. In 1835 a former member of the British East India Company published a book in which he advocated the need for Britain to obtain some island from which trade with China could be carried on because of the uncertain conditions of trade at Canton following the ending of the Company's monopoly30. In a review of this book published in the Chinese Repository the reviewer remarks on the fact that the author pressed the idea of Britain acquiring Macao from Portugal, which he considered ill-advised. He wrote\n\nThe want of a good harbour, and its dangerous position in the season of typhoons and strong north or east gales, unfit it for the possession of a commercial nation, as point d'appui. Lantao is better, and this we should prefer of the places named by our author. It is an island, capable of defence, producing abundant supplies of food, with many good harbours, is not so near the provincial city as to render it dangerous for natives to resort to it, for the purpose of commerce.31\n\nThus in 1835 Lantao was still considered eligible as a possible British settlement. In May 1839 the British Superintendent of Trade, Captain Charles Elliot, and all British subjects, left Canton as a result of the measures taken by the Imperial Commissioner Lin Tse-hsü, and retired to Macao. However, when in mid-August of 1839 the British were forced out of Macao by Chinese pressure it was to the anchorage of Hong Kong that the English ships went. Although Hong Kong was eventually ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Nanking 1842 this had not always been an automatic choice, the possibility of forming a settlement on Formosa, the Bonin Islands, and on Ma Wan and Lantao island had previously been given serious consideration.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 204841,
        "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-1964",
        "page_number": 144,
        "title": "RAS-1964",
        "content_text": "A RECONNAISSANCE OF MA WAN\n\n119\n\nIn 1897, two years before the lease of the New Territories by China to Britain, the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs set up a small customs house on Ma Wan in order to supervise trade between the Pearl River Delta and Hong Kong. The building used still stands. See photograph on p. 28 Ma Wan and a very small hamlet called Tin Liu. The total population of Ma Wan island at the 1911 census was 473. Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong (H.K. Government Printer, 1911) p. 103 (36).\n\n29 Morse, op. cit., I, 178. The name Kapsingmun appears to have been used by foreigners as an alternative for Kapsuimun which should be preferred.\n\n30 Joseph Thomson, Review of Considerations Respecting the Trade with China (London, 1835). At this period both Lord Napier and after him Captain Charles Elliot spoke of obtaining an island and raising the flag somewhere.\n\n31 The Chinese Repository, IV (1835-6), 548.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209859,
        "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-1983",
        "page_number": 118,
        "title": "RAS-1983",
        "content_text": "96\n\nIn the North District the islands are much barer and less cultivated than in the South District. Only two business centres of any importance exist; Tap Mun and Kat O. Both have shipbuilding sheds; the former has or had a launch service with Taipo, and the latter a distillery which gave a good deal of trouble to the Revenue Department. The business centres of these islands are in fact on the mainland; the Crooked Harbour islands look to Shataukok, the Port Shelter isles to Saikung.\n\nA very important element in the economy of the islands is the returned emigrant or seaman: Lamma has a good many of them; Lantau also. Emigrants generally go to America or Borneo, and a few to Singapore. Some returned emigrants are from Australia, they usually buy land, build a house and settle down.\n\nTour of the Islands\n\nTo get a view of each island as a whole, I suggest that a tour be taken as if in an imaginary launch, starting from Kowloon and going west as if to reach Canton through Kapshuimun (\"Rushing Water Channel\") but turning south of Lantau, passing the East Lamma Channel, and round Cape d'Aguilar into Port Shelter, and so up the East coast to Taipo and Crooked Harbour.\n\nStonecutters: or Ngong Shuen Chau (\"High Junk Island”). Most Chinese placenames are descriptive and have meanings. This one needs no elaboration, I think.\n\nTsingyi: (literally \"Green Clothes\": but the real meaning is uncertain). Has a fair harbour, a few shops and several villages in the northern half. The hills on this island are unusually high. There are two or three limekilns. A ferry calls about four times a day. Once a reclamation was started at the head of the harbour but it came to nothing and only two or three walls now mark where it was meant to be. The inhabitants are Hakka.\n\nIn 1856 this island was the scene of a small naval action against a number of pirate junks flying the rebel flag of the Taipings. The captain of H. M. S. Sampson states in his dispatch:\n\nIn proceeding through the mandarin channel (going west) some junks were observed at anchor inside the island, close",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209860,
        "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-1983",
        "page_number": 119,
        "title": "RAS-1983",
        "content_text": "97\n\nin the N. E. corner. My pilot not being acquainted with the channel, I got a fisherman's boat to go up with one of the Chinamen I had on board, to see if he could recognise his property. He shortly returned on board, saying his boat was there, and that the other boats were pirates. I immediately stood in under easy steam, when the pirates seeing my intention, made sail, and ran through the channel towards Wanchowchow (Stonecutters). I fired a few shots at them, but they soon got under the cover of the land. Then sending my boats after them, and running round outside the Island. I had the satisfaction of driving them on shore, and destroying five, as well as liberating two market-boats with several passengers who had been in confinement for several days.\n\nThree captured men are sworn to by one of the owners of the boats, and I have sent them in irons to Hong Kong.\n\nThese piratical boats had all the rebel flag flying and fired upon our boats, without however doing any damage.\n\nMa Wan (\"Horse Bay\"). This island is low-lying, although the geological structure is the same as Tsingyi and Lantau. The east coast has a fine bay, almost unapproachable for rocks. The inhabitants are mostly Hakka. One of the Customs stations built for the so-called \"Blockade of Hong Kong\" during the 1870s and 1880s still stands on this island; it is now used as a school.\n\nThe waters around Ma Wan are known as Kapshuimun (\"Rushing Water Channel\"). The name is apt since Kapshuimun has about the swiftest tiderip of any channel in Hong Kong. It is 25 fathoms deep. It is the track of all steamers from Hong Kong going to and from the Delta. Opposite Ma Wan, on the south shore of Kapshuimun, that is, on the northernmost tip of Lantau, are the only wolframite mines in the islands.\n\nLantau. This is our biggest island, two and a half times the size of Hong Kong Island. Lantau Peak is the highest peak in the Ladrones 3061 feet.\n\nThe northern end is almost deserted except for a few tiny hamlets round Yam O (“Hidden Haven\"), a perfect smugglers'",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v",
        "rank": 0
    }
]