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Appendix B.

Report of the District Officer and Collector on the New Territories for 1907.

1. The change of most importance during the year has of course been the beginning of the Railway. A great number of New Territories natives have found employment in connection with it, and they have done well out of it-so well in fact that the minimum monthly rate of wages has gone up from $7.30 to $9 for any kind of unskilled work: a rate as high as that obtaining in Hongkong. In spite of this however the construction work has not been an unmixed blessing even to the natives themselves; the kind of adventurer that is attracted to any spot newly busy has been quite sufficiently in evidence all along the line, and seems unfortunately to have done fairly well. And this in spite of a marked absence of serious crime; his profits have been made by methods which laid him open only to civil action. A great number of cases of this kind have been brought to Tai Po during the year, and while a number have been more or less successfully settled, the task is getting a more and more difficult one. Debtors are beginning to see the advantages of being obdurate, for the Summary Court in Hongkong has more terror for their Creditors than for them. Partly due perhaps to a number of cases of this kind, and partly also to the closer intercourse with imported coolies and outside traders is the rather regrettable fact that the natives on this side of the country are shewing signs of becoming civilised-of losing, that is, their own proper simplicity.

2. As compared with the Railway, nothing of any great note has occurred during the year. The readiness with which the Crown Rent was paid-it could hardly be taken fast enough was a pleasing sign of a growing prosperity and of content with things as they are. Other signs are not wanting that the condition of the population is improving; the making of several roads by private village enterprise, of a kind much superior to anything here existing before 1898: the erection of a number of new houses, though any advance in this is perhaps counterbalanced by the fact that quite number have also been vacated. As far as can be seen however the reasons for this desertion are mostly particular-the houses are inferior ones which would not pay for repair, something has occurred to ruin their Fung Shui, or the owners have died without heirs; they contain nothing to discount the idea of a generally increasing prosperity. The markets are busy-those at a distance from the line as well as the nearer ones; and local capitalists seem to have been studying the railway methods with a view of starting works of their own-preferably brick-making. Best of all, there has been very marked reduction in the cases of serious crime reported and this in spite of the fact that the state of things over the border seems to be no better than it ever was.

3. The one great want of the country is proper roads. Quite a few of the local business men are waiting to put into practice the lesson they have learnt from the railway bullock carts, and the opening of the new Ping Shan to Castle Peak Road is very keenly looked forward to as the beginning of a proper roal system. As long as there is no internal communication in the Territories, local enterprise has little opportunity; when the opportunity offers, there is not a little capital ready to take advantage of it to the full.

9th February, 1908.

E. R. HALLIFAX, District Officer and Collector.