ENG-1951 — Page 146

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The ceded territory of Kowloon originally consisted of a number of low dry foothills running southward from the escarpment of the Kowloon hills in a V-shaped peninsula two miles long and nowhere more than two miles wide. Most of these foothills have now been levelled and the soil used to extend the area by reclamation. The town of Kowloon now covers the whole of this peninsula and a part of the leased territory to the north of it. It contains the Colony's main industrial area, one of the two principal commercial dockyards, wharves for ocean-going ships, and a large residental suburb. Its population in 1941 threatened to overtake that of Victoria. The terminus of the Kowloon-Canton Railway, which connects at Canton with the network of the Chinese railways, is at the extreme southern tip of the peninsula. The Unicorn range of hills, even more precipitous though less high than those on the island, forms a barrier between Kowloon and the remainder of the Kowloon Peninsula.

A large part of the New Territories, both islands and mainland, is steep and barren. Before the war considerable areas were afforested, but one of the unfortunate results of the occupation of the Colony by the Japanese was the felling of the vast majority of the trees for firewood, with the consequence that now only a few isolated woods remain, principally in the vicinity of villages. Systematic re-afforestation has been going on steadily since the end of the war. The highest point is the mountain called Taimoshan (3,141 feet) which lies seven miles north-west of Kowloon. To the north-west of this mountain and extending to the marshes on the verge of Deep Bay stretches the Colony's largest area of cultivable land. The eastern half of the New Territories mainland is covered by irregular mountain masses deeply indented by arms of the sea and narrow valleys. Wherever cultivation is made possible by the presence of flat land and water, villages exist and crops are raised. Intricate terracing brings the maximum of land under cultivation and the Chinese farmers, though ready to adopt any modern methods which are suited to local conditions and whose value has been demonstrated to them by practical tests, find in fact that there are few directions in which their traditional methods can be improved upon.

The New Territories include 75 adjacent islands many of which are uninhabited. Productive land is even scarcer than on the mainland and the island population includes many fisherfolk living aboard their boats. Lantao, the largest island, is well watered, but the gradients are such that even the patient Chinese farmer has been able to secure only a few precarious footholds and there is little cultivation. Wild boar and barking deer abound among the well-wooded ravines and scrub- covered spurs of this lonely island. The rest of the islands are much smaller, and range in character from the thickly-populated Cheung

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