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132 settlements. These Hakkas cut the grass from the hill sides for fuel, made charcoal as long as there was any timber left, formed vegetable fields on hilly or swampy ground neglected by the Puntis, started granite quarries, or worked in the Punti villages as blacksmiths or barbers. Thus the Hakka villages of Mongkok, Tsopaitsai, Tsimshatsui and Matauchung were formed on Kowloon Peninsula, and on Hongkong Island the hamlets of Hungheunglou, Tunglowan, Taitamtuk, Shaiwan, Hoktsui, Wongmakok, and Little Hongkong. Similar hamlets were formed by the Hakkas at the quarries of Taikoktsui, Hokün, and Tokwawan on Kowloon, and at the quarries of Tsattsimui, Shuitsingwan, Wongkoktsui, and Akungngam on the Island of Hongkong.

Thus it happened that, ever since the Ming Dynasty, two distinct tribes of Chinese, differing from each other in language, customs and manners, formed the native population of Hongkong and Kowloon. As a rule, the Puntis were more intelligent, active and cunning, and became the dominant race, whilst the Hakkas, good-natured, industrious and honest, served as hewers of wood and stone and drawers of water. But from the first advent of the British and all through the wars with China, the Puntis as a rule were the enemies and the Hakkas the friends, purveyors, commissariat and transport coolies of the foreigners, whilst the fishing population provided boatmen and pilots for the foreign trade.

Later on, a third class of natives, speaking another dialect (Tiehchiu, or Swatow dialect), settled at Shaukiwan, Tokwawan, Hunghom and Yaumati. These people, generally called Hoklos, were all seafaring men, bolder in character than either Hakkas or Puntis, and specially addicted to smuggling and piracy. Among all the pirates on the coast, these Hoklos were most dreaded on account of their ferocious and daring deeds. In later years, these Hoklos supplied the crews of nearly all the salt smuggling and opium smuggling boats, the terror of the Chinese revenue cruizers.

After the downfall of the Ming Dynasty (A.D. 1628), the scattered remnants of the Ming army, still hoping to retrieve the