stationed on the hill tops kept a look-ont for merchant vessels. The descendants of these piratical fishermen gave, in subsequent years, an endless deal of trouble to the British Government. It was this piratical predisposition of the fishermen residing in the neighbourhood of Hongkong that had caused the early Portuguese navigators to give these Islands the general name Ladrones.
During the reign of the native Ming Dynasty (A.D. 1468 to 1628), a period of comparative peace and order ensued whilst the fishing vessels of Shaukiwan and Aberdeen confined their depredations to the regular levy of a small fee, willingly paid by junks benefitting by the short cut afforded by the Ly-ee-moon and Lamma channels or by the safe anchorage which some of the bays of Hongkong provided in case of an approaching typhoon. Both the Peninsula of Kowloon and the Island of Hongkong now began to be peopled by peaceful and industrious settlers from the neighbouring Tungkoon District. The town of Kowloon was formed about this time by settlers speaking the Cantonese dialect, called Puntis (lit. aborigines). These Puntis, after denuding the hill sides of all available timber or firewood, took possession of all arable ground to be found on the territory now British, and took out licenses for such fields from the Tungkoon Magistracy. Thus the hamlets of Matauwai (near Kowloon city) with Kwantailou (Eastpoint) and Wongnaichung (on the Island of Hongkong) were among the first to be formed, and to them were added later on the hamlets of Sookonpou (Bowring-town), Tanglungchau and Pokfulam. Some of the fishing villages, Chikchü (Stanley), Shekou (between Cape Collinson and Cape D'Aguilar), and Yaumati (on Kowloon Peninsula) now rose also into importance. Among the people then residing on Hongkong a number of families of the Tong clan held all the best pieces of ground and the members of this Tong clan looked upon themselves as the owners of Hongkong.
Some time, however, after the Puntis had occupied the best portions of Kowloon and Hongkong, settlers from the North-east of the Canton Province, speaking a different dialect, called Hakkas (lit. strangers), began to push their way in between Punti
