there is no reason to suppose they were treated with undue leniency. It is perhaps well for the self-respect of the Chinese that the Wei establishments had been abolished long before the capture of Weihai by the Japanese in 1895, otherwise the Catchers would have found themselves in the ignoble position of the Caught. We have seen that the city wall of Weihaiwei was first built in 1403. The troops were stationed within the city and also in barracks erected at the various beacon-posts and forts which lined the coast to east and west, but considerable numbers in times of peace lived on their farms in the neighbourhood and only took up arms when specially summoned. The official quarters of the commandant of the Wei--the principal _chih-hui_--were in the yamên which is now the residence of the Chinese deputy-magistrate. The number of troops under his charge seems to have varied according to the exigencies of the moment, but it is recorded that Weihaiwei was at first (at the end of the fourteenth century) provided with a garrison of two thousand soldiers, which number was gradually increased. The area of the Wei--including the lands devoted to direct military uses and those farmed by the military colonists--was probably considerably less than one hundred square miles in extent, and embraced a part of the most northerly (peninsular) portion of the territory now administered by Great Britain. It was not only from foreign "barbarians" that the inhabitants of Wên-têng had to fear attack. Their own lawless countrymen were sometimes no less daring and ruthless than the Japanese. Those that came by sea were, indeed, foreigners in the eyes of the people of Shantung, for most of them came from the provinces south of the Yangtse and spoke dialects quite incomprehensible in the north. During the Chia-ching period (1522-66) a Chinese pirate named Wang Hsien-wu seized the island of Liukung, within full view of the soldiers of the Wei, and maintained himself there with such ease and comfort that he built fifty-three houses for his pirate band and took toll of all junks that passed in and out of the harbour. He was finally dislodged by a warlike Imperial Censor, who after his main work was accomplished made a careful survey of the arable land of the island and had it put under cultivation by soldier-farmers. This useful work was again pursued with energy rather more than half a century later, when in 1619 the prefect T'ao Lang-hsien admitted a few immigrants to the island and enrolled them as payers of land-tax. With a view to their better protection against further sudden attacks from pirates he established on the island a system of signal-beacons.