ENG-1952 — Page 227

HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT, 1952

Between the island and the mainland of Kowloon lies the harbour, a natural and almost landlocked anchorage about 17 square miles in area, and of a width varying from one to three miles. The entrance from the east is by a deep-water channel through Lyemun Pass, five to nine hundred yards wide. On the western side the harbour is protected by a group of islands pierced by channels of various depths. The largest of these islands is Lantao which is nearly twice. the size of Hong Kong Island. This harbour, lying midway between the main ports of Haiphong in Indo- China and Shanghai at the mouth of the Yangtse River, has become the gateway to South China and has grown to be one of the greatest seaports in the world.

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 com- mercial dockyards, wharves for ocean-going ships, and a large residential 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.

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