Page:EB1911 - Volume 12.djvu/846

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HAILSHAM—HAINAN
821

James Fergusson; and their grandson, Sir Charles Dalrymple, 1st Bart. (cr. 1887), M.P. for Bute from 1868 to 1885, afterwards came into Lord Hailes’s estate and took his family name.

Lord Hailes’s most important contribution to literature was the Annals of Scotland, of which the first volume, “From the accession of Malcolm III., surnamed Canmore, to the accession of Robert I.,” appeared in 1776, and the second, “From the accession of Robert I., surnamed Bruce, to the accession of the house of Stewart,” in 1779. It is, as Dr Johnson justly described this work at the time of its appearance, a “Dictionary” of carefully sifted facts, which tells all that is wanted and all that is known, but without any laboured splendour of language or affected subtlety of conjecture. The other works of Lord Hailes include Historical Memoirs concerning the Provincial Councils of the Scottish Clergy (1769); An Examination of some of the Arguments for the High Antiquity of Regiam Majestatem (1769); three volumes entitled Remains of Christian Antiquity (“Account of the Martyrs of Smyrna and Lyons in the Second Century,” 1776; “The Trials of Justin Martyr, Cyprian, &c.,” 1778; “The History of the Martyrs of Palestine, translated from Eusebius,” 1780); Disquisitions concerning the Antiquities of the Christian Church (1783); and editions or translations of portions of Lactantius, Tertullian and Minucius Felix. In 1786 he published An Inquiry into the Secondary Causes which Mr Gibbon has assigned for the Rapid Growth of Christianity (Dutch translation, Utrecht, 1793), one of the most respectable of the very many replies which were made to the famous 15th and 16th chapters of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

A “Memoir” of Lord Hailes is prefixed to the 1808 reprint of his Inquiry into the Secondary Causes.


HAILSHAM, a market-town in the Eastbourne parliamentary division of Sussex, England, 54 m. S.S.E. from London by the London, Brighton & South Coast railway. Pop. (1901), 4197. The church of St Mary is Perpendicular. The picturesque Augustinian priory of Michelham lies 2 m. W. by the Cuckmere river; it is altered into a dwelling house, but retains a gatehouse, crypt and other portions of Early English date. There was also a Premonstratensian house at Otham, 3 m. S., but the remains are scanty. Hailsham has a considerable agricultural trade, and manufactures of rope and matting are carried on.


HAINAN, or, as it is usually called in Chinese, K ʽiung-chow-fu, a large island belonging to the Chinese province of Kwang-tung, and situated between the Chinese Sea and the Gulf of Tong-king from 20° 8′ to 17° 52′ N., and from 108° 32′ to 111° 15′ E. It measures 160 m. from N.E. to S.W., and the average breadth is about 90 m. The area is estimated at from 1200 to 1400 sq. m., or two-thirds the size of Sicily. From the peninsula of Lei-chow on the north it is separated by the straits of Hainan, which have a breadth of 15 or 20 m.

With the exception of a considerable area in the north, and broad tracts on the north-east and north-west sides, the whole island is occupied by jungle-covered mountains, with rich valleys between. The central range bears the name of Li-mou shan or Wu-tchi shan (the Five-Finger Mountain), and attains a height of 6000 or 7000 ft. Its praises are celebrated in a glowing ode by Chʽiu, a native poet. The island appears to be well watered, and some of its rivers are not without importance as possible highways of commerce; but the details of its hydrography are very partially ascertained. A navigable channel extends in an irregular curve from the bay of Hoi-how (Hai-Kʽow) in the north to Tan-chow on the west coast. Being exposed to the winter monsoon, the northern parts of the island enjoy much the same sort of temperate climate as the neighbouring provinces of the mainland, but in the southern parts, protected from the monsoon by the mountain ranges, the climate is almost or entirely tropical. Snow falls so rarely that its appearance in 1684 is reported in the native chronicles as a remarkable event. Earthquakes are a much more familiar phenomenon, having occurred, according to the same authority, in 1523, 1526, 1605, 1652, 1677, 1681, 1684, 1702, 1704, 1725, 1742, 1816, 1817 and 1822. Excellent timber of various kinds—eagle-wood, rose-wood, liquidambar, &c.—is one of the principal products of the island, and has even been specially transported to Peking for imperial purposes. The coco palm flourishes freely even in the north, and is to be found growing in clumps with the Pinus sinensis. Rice, cotton, sugar, indigo, cinnamon, betel-nuts, sweet potatoes, ground-nuts and tobacco are all cultivated in varying quantities. The aboriginal inhabitants collect a kind of tea called tʽien chʽa, or celestial tea, which looks like the leaves of a wild camellia, and has an earthy taste when infused. Lead, silver, copper and iron occur in the Shi-lu shan or “stone-green-hill”; the silver at least was worked till 1850. Gold and lapis lazuli are found in other parts of the island.

The ordinary cattle of Hainan are apparently a cross between the little yellow cow of south China and the zebu of India. Buffaloes are common, and in the neighbourhood of Nanlu at least they are frequently albinos. Horses are numerous but small. Hogs and deer are both common wild animals, and of the latter there are three species, Cervus Eldi, Cervus hippelaphus and Cervus vaginalis. Among the birds, of which 172 species are described by Mr Swinhoe in his paper in The Ibis (1870), there are eagles, notably a new species Spilornis Rutherfordi, buzzards, harriers, kites, owls, goatsuckers and woodpeckers. The Upupa ceylonensis is familiar to the natives as the “bird of the Li matrons,” and the Palaeornis javanica as the “sugar-cane bird.”

Hainan forms a fu or department of the province of Kwang-tung, though strictly it is only a portion of the island that is under Chinese administration, the remainder being still occupied by unsubjugated aborigines. The department contains three chow and ten hien districts. K‘iung-chow-hien, in which the capital is situated; Ting-an-hien, the only inland district; Wen-chʽang-hien, in the north-east of the island; Hui-tʽung-hien, Lo-hui-hien, Ling-shu-hien, Wan-chow, Yai-chow (the southmost of all), Kan-ēn-hien, Chʽang-hwa-hien, Tan-chow, Lin-kao-hien and Chʽēng-mai-hien. The capital Kʽiung-chow-fu is situated in the north about 10 li (or 3 m.) from the coast on the river. It is a well-built compact city, and its temples and examination halls are in good preservation. Carved articles in coco-nuts and scented woods are its principal industrial product. In 1630 it was made the seat of a Roman Catholic mission by Benoit de Mathos, a Portuguese Jesuit, and the old cemetery still contains about 113 Christian graves. The port of Kʽiung-chow-fu at the mouth of the river, which is nearly dry at low water, is called simply Hoi-how, or in the court dialect Hai-Kʽow, i.e. seaport. The two towns are united by a good road, along which a large traffic is maintained partly by coolie porters but more frequently by means of wheel-barrows, which serve the purpose of cabs and carts. The value of the trade of the port has risen from £670,600 in 1899 to £719,333 in 1904. In the same year 424 vessels, representing a tonnage of 312,554, visited the port. This trade is almost entirely with the British colony of Hong-Kong, with which the port is connected by small coasting steamers, but since 1893 it has had regular steamboat communication with Haiphong in Tongking. The population of Kʽiung-chow, including its shipping port of Hoi-how, is estimated at 52,000. The number of foreign residents in 1900 was about 30, most of them officials or missionaries.

The inhabitants of Hainan may be divided into three classes, the Chinese immigrants, the civilized aborigines or Shu-li and the wild aborigines or Sheng-li. The Chinese were for the most part originally from Kwang-si and the neighbouring provinces, and they speak a peculiar dialect, of which a detailed account by Mr Swinhoe was given in The Phoenix, a Monthly Magazine for China, &c. (1870). The Shu-li as described by Mr Taintor are almost of the same stature as the Chinese, but have a more decided copper colour, higher cheek-bones and more angular features, while their eyes are not oblique. Their hair is long, straight and black, and their beards, if they have any, are very scanty. They till the soil and bring rice, fuel, timber, grass-cloth, &c., to the Chinese markets. The Sheng-li or Li proper, called also La, Le or Lauy, are probably connected with the Laos of Siam and the Lolos of China. Though not gratuitously aggressive, they are highly intractable, and have given great trouble to the Chinese authorities. Among themselves they carry on