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168 Singapore and erected on lower storeys of brick or stones. But at first the only substantial buildings erected by private parties were a house and godowns built at East Point by order of Mr. A. Matheson who foresaw the permanency of the Colony at a time when most people doubted it. The native stone masons, brick-layers, carpenters and scaffold builders, required for the construction of roads and barracks (by the Engineer corps of the Expedition) and for the erection of mercantile buildings, were immediately followed by a considerable influx of Chinese provision dealers (who settled near the site of the present Central Market, soon known as 'the Bazaar'), and by Chinese furniture dealers, joiners, cabinet makers and curio shops, congregating opposite the present Naval Yard, and along the present Queen's Road East, then known as the 'Canton Bazaar.' The day labourers settled down in huts at Taipingshan, at Saiyingpun and at Tsimshatsui. But the largest proportion of the Chinese population were the so-called Tanka or boat people, the pariahs of South-China, whose intimate connection with the social life of the foreign merchants in the Canton factories used to call forth an annual proclamation on the part of the Cantonese Authorities warning foreigners against the demoralising influences of these people. These Tan-ka people, forbidden by Chinese law (since A.D. 1730) to settle on shore or to compete at literary examinations, and prohibited by custom from intermarrying with the rest of the people, were from the earliest days of the East India Company always the trusty allies of foreigners. They furnished pilots and supplies of provisions to British men-of-war, troopships and mercantile vessels, at times when doing so was declared by the Chinese Government to be rank treason, unsparingly visited with capital punishment. They were the hangers-on of the foreign factories of Canton and of the British shipping at Lintin, Kamsingmoon, Tungku and Hongkong Bay. They invaded Hongkong the moment the settlement was started, living at first on boats in. the harbour with their numerous families, and gradually settling on shore. They have maintained ever since almost a monopoly of the supply of pilots and ships'