When negotiations were being carried on seventy years ago for the cession of Hongkong to the British Crown the only interests that were properly consulted were those of commerce. Military and naval requirements were so far overlooked that one side of the harbour, with its dominating range of mountains, was allowed to remain in the hands of China, the small island of Hongkong alone passing into the hands of Great Britain. The strategic weakness of the position was soon recognised; it was obvious that the Chinese, or any hostile Power allied with China, could hold the island and the harbour, with its immense shipping, entirely at its mercy by the simple expedient of mounting guns on the Kowloon hills. The first favourable opportunity was taken by the British Government to obtain a cession of a few square miles of the Kowloon peninsula, but from the strategic point of view this step was of very little use; and it was not till 1898 that the Hongkong "New Territory"--a patch of country which, including the mountain ranges and some considerable islands, has an area of several hundred square miles--was "leased" to Great Britain "for a period of ninety-nine years." When, in the same year, arrangements were being made for the "lease" of Weihaiwei, no decision had been come to as to whether the place was to be made into a fortress, like Hongkong, or merely retained as a flying base for the fleet or as a depôt of commerce: but to make quite sure that there would be enough territory for all possible or probable purposes the British Government asked for and obtained a lease not only of the island of Liukung but also of a strip of land measuring ten miles round the entire bay. The bay itself, with its various inlets, is so extensive that this strip of land comprises an area of nearly three hundred square miles, with a coast-line of over seventy miles; while the beeline frontier from the village of Ta-lan-t'ou in the extreme east to Hai Chuang in the extreme west measures about forty miles. This land-frontier is purely artificial: in one or two cases, while it includes one portion of a village it leaves the rest in Chinese territory. This considerable area is under direct British rule, and within it no Chinese official has any jurisdiction whatever except, as we have seen,[52] within the walls of the little city from which the Territory derives its name. Beyond the British frontier lies a country in which the British Government may, if it sees fit, "erect fortifications, station troops, or take any other measures necessary for defensive purposes at any points on or near the coast of the region east of the meridian 121° 40' E. of Greenwich." The British "sphere of influence" may thus be said to extend from about half-way to Chefoo on the west to the Shantung Promontory on the east: but Great Britain has had no necessity for the practical exercise of her rights in that wide region.