The smugglers were not long in solving the mystery of their secret hoards being all at once so successfully located; and, all too soon for the Revenue, a well-aimed shot from the cliffs presently cut the dog’s career short. “Perhaps the oddest form of the smuggling carried on in later times,” says a writer in an old magazine, “was a curious practice in vogue between Calais and Dover about 1819–20. This, however, was rather an open and well-known technical evasion of the customs dues than actual smuggling. The fashion at that time came in of ladies wearing Leghorn hats and bonnets of enormous dimensions. They were huge, strong plaits, nearly circular, and commonly about a yard in diameter; and they sold in England at from two to three guineas, and sometimes even more, apiece. A heavy duty was laid upon them, amounting to nearly half their value. It is a well-known concession, made by the custom-houses of various countries, that wearing-apparel in use is not liable to duty, and herein lay the opportunity of those who were financially interested in the import of Leghorn plaits. A dealer in them hired, at a low figure, a numerous company of women and girls of the poorest class to voyage daily from Dover to Calais and back, and entered into a favourable contract with the owners of one of the steamers for season-tickets for the whole band of them at low rates. The sight of these women leaving the town in the morning with the most deplorable headgear and returning in the evening gloriously arrayed, so far as their heads were concerned, was for some few years a familiar and amusing one to the people of Dover. Another ingenious evasion was that long practised by the Swiss importers of watches at the time when watches also were subject to duty. An _ad valorem_ duty was placed upon them, which was arrived at by the importers making a declaration of their value. In order to prevent the value being fixed too low, and the Revenue being consequently defrauded, the Government had the right of buying any goods they chose, at the prices declared. This was by no means a disregarded right, for the authorities did frequently, in suspicious cases, exercise it, and bought considerable consignments of goods, which were afterwards disposed of by auction, at well-known custom-house sales.