The peninsula is an irregularly shaped tongue of land with rugged and indented coast‐line jutting out from the province of Kwang‐tung. It is of little value except to safeguard the possession of Hong Kong. It consists of range after range of rugged, barren hills, grass‐clad, with here and there tangled vegetation but with scarcely a tree upon them, separated by narrow valleys thinly occupied by Chinese. It could only support a small population; for arable land is scarce, and the few inhabitants are forced to add to their scanty crops by terracing small fields on the steep sides of the hills. Villages are few and far between. Those that exist are well and substantially built; for, as in Hong Kong, granite is everywhere present on the mainland, the soil being composed of disintegrated granite. Cattle‐breeding and even sheep‐raising seem difficult; for the rank grass of the hills will scarcely support animal life. Experiments made on the islands near Hong Kong, which are of similar nature to the mainland, seem to bear this out.
Winding inlets and long, narrow bays run far into the land on both sides and considerably diminish the space at the disposal of the cultivator. Occasionally narrow creeks are dammed by the villagers, and the ground is roughly reclaimed. The supply of fresh water is limited to the rainfall and the small streams that run down the hillsides. The presence of mineral wealth is unsuspected and unlikely. Altogether the Hinterland is poor and unproductive. Efforts are being made to develop its scanty resources; and if cattle, wheat, and vegetables could be raised, a ready market would be found for them in Hong Kong.
The present frontier line is exceedingly short—about ten miles if I remember aright—as at the boundary the sea runs far into the land on each side of the peninsula in two bays—Deep Bay on the west, Mirs Bay on the east. The latter is being used as the winter training‐ground of the ships of our China squadron. The former is very shallow, being almost dry at low tide, and earns its name from the depth of its penetration into the land.
One strongly defined portion of the boundary is the shallow, tidal Samchun River which runs into Deep Bay. Across it the Chinese territory begins in a fertile and cultivated valley surrounding an important and comparatively wealthy market‐town, Samchun. Beyond that again rises another line of rugged hills. I have never penetrated into the interior here farther than Samchun, so cannot speak with accuracy of what the country is like at the other side of these hills; but I have been told that it is flat and fertile nearly all the way on to Canton. The English firm in Hong Kong who projected the railway to Canton employed a Royal Engineer officer to survey the route for the proposed line. He told me, as well as I can remember, that he had estimated the cost from Kowloon to about ten miles north of Samchun at about £27,000 a mile, and from there on to Canton at £7,000 a mile. That seems to show that the country beyond these hills is flat and easy. The cutting, tunneling, and embanking required for the passage of a railway line through the continuous hills of the Kowloon Hinterland would be a very laborious undertaking. There is no long level stretch from Hong Kong harbour to the frontier; and the hills are mainly granite.
Since the Hinterland has come into their possession the colonial authorities have made an excellent road from Kowloon into their new territory. It is carried up the steep hills and down again to the valleys in easy gradients. It is of more importance for military than for commercial purposes; as the peninsula produces so little and wheeled transport is unknown.
The cession of the Hinterland in 1898 was very strongly resented by its few inhabitants. Owing to their poverty and inaccessibility, they were probably seldom plagued with visits from Chinese officials; and they objected to their sudden transfer to the care of the more energetic “foreign devils.” So when the Governor of Hong Kong arranged a dramatic scene to take place at the hoisting of the British flag on the frontier, and invitations were freely issued to the officials and their wives and the society in general of the island to be present on this historic occasion, the evil‐minded inhabitants prepared a surprise for them. The police and the guard of honour went out on the previous day to encamp on the ground on which the ceremony was to take place. To their consternation they found that the new subjects of the British Empire had dug a trench on the side of a hill close by, not 800 yards from the spot on which the flagstaff was to be erected, and had occupied it in force, armed with jingals, matchlocks, Brown Besses, and old rifles—antique weapons certainly, but good enough to kill all the ladies and officials to be present next day. Information was immediately sent back to Hong Kong; and quite a little campaign was inaugurated. Companies of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, the Hong Kong Regiment, and the Hong Kong and Singapore Battalion Royal Artillery, with detachments of bluejackets, chased their new fellow‐subjects over the hills, exchanged shots with them, and captured enough ancient weapons to stock an armoury. Lieutenant Barrett, Hong Kong Regiment, while bathing in a pond in a Chinese village, discovered a number of old smooth‐bore cannons, which had been hurriedly thrown in there. Little resistance was made; but the picnic arrangements for the dramatic hoisting of the flag did not come off.
The inhabitants of the peninsula were speedily reconciled to British rule and have since given no further trouble. A few European and Indian police constables, armed with carbines and revolvers, are stationed in it and patrol the country in pairs, frequently armed with no more lethal weapon than an umbrella.
The possession of the Hinterland has strengthened enormously the defence of Hong Kong from the landward side. Three passes, about 1,500 feet high, cross the last range of hills above Kowloon; and these can be easily guarded. The situation of a hostile army which had landed on the coast some distance away and endeavoured to march through the difficult and mountainous country of the mainland, would be hopeless in the presence of a strong defending force. Entangled in the narrow valleys, forced to cross a series of roadless passes over which even field‐guns must be carried bodily, fired at incessantly from the never‐ending hilltops, it would be unable to proceed far. A couple of regiments of Gurkhas or Pathans would be invaluable in such a country. Moving rapidly from hill to hill they could decimate the invaders almost with impunity to themselves.
The garrison of Hong Kong previous to 1900 consisted of a few batteries R.A. to man the forts, some companies of the Asiatic Artillery or Hong Kong and Singapore Battalion Royal Artillery (a corps of Sikhs and Punjaubis raised in India for the defence of these two coast ports), one British infantry regiment, the Hong Kong Regiment (ten companies strong), and the Hong Kong Volunteers, Europeans, and Portuguese half‐castes. The Asiatic Artillery were armed with muzzle‐loading mountain guns. Such a force was absurdly small for such a large and important place. General Sir William Gascoigne, K.C.M.G., was forced to still further denude it of troops in order to send men hurriedly to North China to defend Tientsin. He was left with his garrison companies of Royal Artillery, half of the Royal Welch Fusiliers and Asiatic Artillery, and four‐fifths of the Hong Kong Regiment. The situation would have been one of extreme danger had a rising occurred in Canton and the southern provinces; and two regiments of General Gaselee’s original force were stopped on their way to the North. The 3rd Madras Light Infantry, under Lieutenant‐Colonel Teversham, was composed of men of that now unwarlike presidency. But the 22nd Bombay Infantry, under the command of Lieutenant‐Colonel R. Baillie, was formed from the fighting races of Rajputana and Central India and won many encomiums for their smartness in manœuvres over the steep hills and their satisfactory work altogether.