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Rh 1662 to 1722), who took quite an exceptional position in that he positively encouraged foreigners to come to his Court and systematically favoured foreign trade. During his reign the water-ways of Hongkong which, with the Kap-shui-moon and Sulphur channels in the West, and the Ly-ee-moon pass in the East, formed all along the natural highway of commerce, connecting Canton and the South-west coast with the ports of Swatow, Amoy, Foochow and Shanghai on the East coast of China, rose into commercial importance.

As to the history of Hongkong previous to the rise of the Tatsing Dynasty (A.D. 1644) very little is known.

There is, however, on the Kowloon peninsula, and within British territory, an ancient rock inscription, on a large looselying granite boulder, which crowns the summit of a circular hill, jutting out into the sea, close to the village of Matauchung, directly West of Kowloon city. This inscription, consisting of three Chinese characters (Sung Wong T‘ong, lit. Hall of a King of the Sung) arranged horizontally, was originally cut about half an inch deep in the northern face of the boulder. The Chinese Government believe it to be a genuine inscription, about 600 years old. The original characters, having become nearly effaced in course of time, were renewed at the beginning of the present century (1807) by order of the Viceroy of Canton, the date of this restoration being recorded by a separate inscription the characters of which are arranged perpendicularly. The memories attaching to this inscription and to the whole hill, which still shows the outlines of the original entrenchments, are so sacred in the eyes of Chinese officials and literati, that excavations and quarrying were prohibited in that locality under the severest penalties. When the Peninsula was leased and subsequently ceded to the British Crown, the Chinese Government specially stipulated that the rock inscription and the whole hill should remain untouched. Nevertheless, quarrying has occasionally been attempted there since the locality came into British possession.

Chinese history states that, when the Sung Dynasty was overturned by the invasion of the Mongols under Kublai Khan 9