The smuggler’s present methods of concealment, notwithstanding frequent detections, give evidence that if not so inventive as his more courageous predecessors, he still retains their faculty of hiding his contraband goods in places where they will probably be least suspected. A case occurred at Hull, in December 1883, which proves that perseverance at least is still an attribute possessed by the smuggler. On the arrival of a steamer at that port, the officers discovered in the donkey-engine boiler twenty-one pounds of tobacco. To effect the seizure, the officers were compelled to unscrew the manhole lid of the boiler; and on a consulting engineer being called to give evidence, he stated that it must have taken at least a couple of hours to stow the tobacco away. Another case of a similar nature occurred at Sunderland some time ago, when an engineer on board a steamer had a large tin made exactly to fit the manhole of a water-tank. The water-tight tin was packed with tobacco and sunk in the tank, so that the smuggler had to strip to get at it. With amusing candour, the prisoner explained, when brought before the magistrates, that ‘of course it was no use putting the can where the officers would easily find it.’ False-bottomed drawers and chests were formerly a favourite hiding-place for contraband goods; but the trick is now too well known to be safe. Another method much in vogue in the old days of smuggling, but seldom practised now, was to conceal tobacco in loaves of bread specially baked for the purpose. This particular trick has not been lost sight of altogether. At Hull, in March 1884, on a Customs’ officer rummaging the firemen’s quarters on board a steamer, he found two loaves of bread baked in the German fashion. Taking them in his hand, he suspected the weight as being excessive, and cutting one in two with his knife, found four pounds of tobacco inside. The packages had been firmly tied together, and a thin crust baked over them. An ingenious place of concealment was discovered by the officers at Hull in January 1883, when, on boarding a vessel from the continent, they found seventeen boxes of cigars concealed in the hollow of the port and starboard rails which surmounted the bulwarks. Underneath firewood, buried in ballast, hidden in chain lockers, beneath oilcloths, in the stuffing of sofa-pillows, behind cabin panels, in the empty interior of an innocent-looking cabin clock, in these and a thousand other places have the officers, from time to time, discovered the contraband of the smuggler; while it is known that the ropes apparently constituting the upper rigging of small craft have occasionally consisted of tobacco twisted into a resemblance of cordage!