ENG-1954 — Page 301

HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT, 1954

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 residential suburb. Its population in 1941 threatened to overtake that of Victoria and this now appears to have happened as a result of the additional space that is available for development as compared with Hong Kong. Accurate figures are not available, however, to substantiate this contention. 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 than those of the island, forms a barrier between Kowloon and the leased territory lying behind these hills.

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 only a few isolated woods remained, 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 (3,142 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

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