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To celebrate our departure for Hainan, the Commissioner of Customs invited Captains Stewart and Wyles, the Chief Engineer of the Kai Pan, and myself, to dine at his house. I felt flattered, as I was the only wardroom officer invited.

The Kai Pan was only 135 feet in length, with a high poop, bridge deck, and forecastle; so that when the bunkers were filled to the utmost capacity with coal, and three months' provisions were on board, and when the forward compartment was full of fresh water, we were not only very low in the water, but were also some two feet down by the head. This naturally affected our steering.

To make matters worse, the first officer resigned, and as the junior officer was very bulky and unseamanlike, I was kept pretty busy during the first three months of the trip, when a new first officer was appointed.

From Hong Kong waters we proceeded to Hoihow, which port functions as the treaty port of Hainan Island, as the city of Kiungchow, which is situated some miles inland, is too far away from the sea to be used as the treaty port, though officially recorded as such.

Hoihow is situated about a mile above the mouth of a shallow river, with sandbanks extending for some miles beyond, and as the water deepens very gradually, the anchorage for vessels of our craft (10 feet) is about 12 miles outside the sandbanks. At low tide it is impossible for even a ship's gig to cross the sandbanks outside Hoihow River.

The main industry is the exportation of pigs, which the Chinese fit into specially-made bamboo baskets and pile them one on top of the other on the decks of the steamers taking them away. So you can imagine what a noise this cargo makes, and how disagreeable it is for vessels anchored in the neighbourhood.

After reporting to the Hoihow Commissioner, we were ordered to board and examine the papers of all junks passing through Hainan waters. Our custom was to cruise some thirty miles off the island and board junks at sea, making Yulin Kan — a pretty, land-locked harbour at the south end of the island — our base.

We returned here at the end of every two weeks to collect water, such fresh provisions as were procurable, and our mail, which was sent to us overland by courier.

On our arrival at the beginning of the monsoon season — May to September, 1889 — we found that the entrance of the harbour was very narrow, so our captain considered it best to drop me in the cutter to buoy the entrance, and then steamed away, leaving me and my crew of twelve men there for three days, with the ship's dinghy as tender.

As we neared the shore, I noticed a great display of banners and soldiers, which certainly added to the beauty of the approach, but made me wonder what it was all about — for this quiet little port was at the southernmost point of the Chinese Empire, as it was then, and was almost uninhabited. In the past, the East India Company's vessels used to take shelter here while waiting for the favourable monsoons to help them sail up the China coast. I should imagine that this was the first time since those days that so many men had been there at once.

After anchoring the cutter, I went ashore and called on the officer in charge of the troops, who occupied an imposing tent at the end of a large clearing. I was most courteously received by him and the other officers grouped round him, who were all dressed in their picturesque uniforms. After I had informed them of my nationality and mission, and had been invited to sup with them, I returned on board the cutter and had a bath.

Just as I had finished dressing, I noticed a procession move down the beach to a point opposite my boat, carrying a table and chairs which were placed on the sand close to the water's edge. Soon afterwards the officers and Commander-in-Chief arrived, and sat round the table, leaving a vacant chair. I at once understood that they had come to return my call; but as in the first place they had no boats, and, secondly, considered the cutter too small a craft for me to receive visitors on board, they had devised this ingenious method of showing me what they felt about it without the trouble of explaining it in words.

I at once landed in the dinghy and completed the necessary formalities. In the course of conversation they explained their presence there. It appeared that a French gunboat had visited Yulin Kan Harbour the previous season, and it is probable that the soldiers had been sent there to show Chinese sovereignty over the island. They were well-disposed towards us, however, and we finished our work without further interruption, once the formalities of introduction were over — for to the Chinese, politeness is the very essence of their being, and they must be allowed to take their time. At the end of three days the cruiser returned and picked us up, and we went off again.

There is at the south end of Hainan Island, a few miles west of Yulin Kan, the port of Sama, which is situated at the mouth of a small river. It is the headquarters of a fishing fleet and the principal trade centre of the neighbourhood. What interested me most in this locality were the fossilised crabs, which were to be found in the bed of the river.

A few miles up this river one came to the river Sama Kai, which greatly interested me when I visited it with Mr. Unwin, the Commissioner.

It was certainly a place worth going to, for one half of the village was inhabited by Arabs, the other half by Chinese. While in the Arab section I met a man wearing a green turban, showing that he had made the holy pilgrimage to Mecca. I spoke to him in Arabic, and he apologised at once for knowing very little of his native tongue, which was due to the fact that he had lived all his life at Sama Kai. Apparently, some three hundred years before, several Arab dhows had been wrecked off the coast during a typhoon and the survivors, having no means of returning to Arabia, had lived on at Sama Kai and married Chinese wives, subsequently intermarrying among themselves. They had built an Arab mosque and were in every way similar to any Arabs I had previously met, except that very few of them knew how to speak their mother tongue, although they could read the Koran.

The northern end of the coast of Hainan is inhabited by Chinese who have settled there, while the Loys, or aborigines of the island, live in the interior of the southern part. There is a Loy village some four miles up the river that flows into Yulin Kan Harbour. The aborigines are rather darker skinned than the Chinese, and the women wear skirts of hand-woven material — whereas Chinese women wear trousers. It is rather an amusing sight to see a number of women caught in the open by a shower of rain, for their main object then is to keep their hair dry. To do this they pull their skirts over their heads, and as the yellow skin under their skirts is not exposed to the sun, it retains its natural colour, whereas the lower portions of their legs are a deep brown.

Two more quaint inhabitants of Hainan are the black monkey — or gibbon — and the black spider, a large and handsome insect. It measures about four inches between the leg tips, and is a striking sight with its jet black body and bright yellow leg-joints.

It spins a web of thickish yellow thread, which is very sticky and is an unpleasant thing to catch on the face when forcing a way through the jungle undergrowth during a hot day's shooting of jungle fowl.

The gibbon is also black and varied in size, with abnormally long arms and legs which make it look like another kind of large black spider. The natives catch a good many and sell them as pets. To do this, they take a cocoanut, cut a small portion from the top of the shell, and extract the kernel, filling the empty space with smaller nuts. The cocoanut is then tied to a palm tree, and the natives take shelter and wait for their victims to be tempted by the bait.

The monkeys naturally love nuts, and one will soon come down to investigate. He puts his paw into the cocoanut and grasps a handful of the other nuts which are inside; then, finding that he cannot withdraw his hand — and being an abnormally greedy beast — he waits there to see what can be done about it. Meanwhile, the natives come running out from their hiding-places and capture their victim.

While waiting for smugglers off the south-east coast of Hainan, we frequently drifted against the traps set for flying fish by the Chinese fishermen. I thought them most ingenious, and worth describing.

Some ten pieces of large-meshed fishing net, each about 18 inches square, are fastened together by one corner first, and then to the middle of a 10-foot length of thin bamboo. One edge of the nets is made to float by means of wooden attachments, while the opposite edge is weighted to keep it down. The nets are tanned both for preservation and also to give them the appearance and colour of seaweed. The upper or thin end of the bamboo has a broom tied to it, while the lower end has a stone attached to weight the bamboo and keep it upright.

A fishing junk carries a large number of these traps, which are dropped at intervals as she sails along, and when they are all in the water, they drift in the same direction and seem to be attached one to the other.

Flying fish form the chief food of some larger fish, and it is when a flying fish is being chased by its would-be devourer that it flies to escape capture; but as its flights are comparatively short, it frequently, when hard-pressed, takes refuge in bundles of floating seaweed. Thus it is easy to see how the fish would mistake the nets for seaweed and become entangled in them.

There is a pile of salt in each fishing junk, and as the flying fish are removed from the traps, they are thrown into the salt and afterwards carefully stowed across the boat, which stays at sea until it is full; for salted fish keeps indefinitely and is used very extensively for food in all parts of China.

In October (perforce the end of the season, as the south-west monsoon ends in September, and as both the wind currents change from south-west to north-east) junks are unable to make the island from the south.

The junks we were interested in were local ones returning from Singapore, Bangkok, and other southern ports, as these were reported to be smuggling opium through from China. Therefore the Kai Pan and the Chuen Tiao returned to Hoihow, where they were joined by the Li King.

As it was the only occasion on which three of the Maritime Customs Revenue cruisers visited Hoihow together, we held a grand regatta to celebrate the reunion, the chief event being the officers' race in the ship's six-oared gigs.

The three cruisers were new vessels built in England the previous year, 1888. Each had, besides its commander, three deck and three engineer officers and an ex- naval rated gunner, all of whom were Europeans.

The commanders did not participate in the officers' race.

It so happened that one of our officers went on sick leave, which meant that we were one short. The suggestion that one of the Chinese members of the crew should take his place was objected to so strongly by my brother officers in the other cruisers that we eventually decided to row five instead of six against six oars in each of the other boats.

The course was a triangular three-mile one. The sailing races went the full three miles round, while the rowing races were along one side only — one mile in length. The Kai Pan was the flagship on this occasion, and the whole foreign community from Hoihow and Kiang Chow were on board. Besides being one short in our crew, we had the further disadvantage of having a very heavy first engineer as our cox; however, he was full of life and kept his crew alive by chaffing and cheering them on, and was more of a help than a hindrance to them, for we won the race, causing great excitement amongst the onlookers. We deserved our win and felt rather proud of ourselves in consequence. The whole regatta was a tremendous success, and enjoyed immensely both by the onlookers and those taking part in the different events.

During the winter months we carried on preventive work outside Hong Kong waters.