. One cannot acquit the owner of any fraudulent intent,
but one certainly can admire both his ingenuity and the great patience
which must have been necessary to have hollowed a cavity from such an
unyielding material as stone. This was equalled only by the cargo from
Guernsey. Four sacks said to contain potatoes from the Channel Isles
were opened by the Revenue officers at a certain port, and, on being
examined, it was found that these were not potatoes at all. They were
so many rolls of tobacco which had been fashioned to resemble the size
and form of the vegetable, and then covered artfully over with a thin
skin and finally clayed over so cleverly that they had every
appearance of the potatoes they pretended to be.

But the Channel Isles were still notorious. In twelve sacks of flour
imported from Jersey were found hidden in the middle twelve bales of
tobacco weighing 28 lbs. each. A few weeks later three boxes of prunes
also from Jersey were opened, when it was discovered that the prunes
were not more than three inches deep at the top and three inches deep
at the bottom. But between there was a space in which were
concealed--in each box--a paper parcel of silk, some scarves and
gloves, &c. But in order to make the total weight of the box
approximate to that which would have existed had it been full of
prunes a square piece of lead was placed above and another underneath
these dutiable articles.

But to me the most ingenious method of all was that which was employed
in 1820 for smuggling tobacco. The offending ship was one of the
vessels employed in the transport service, and the man who thought of
the device was not far from being a genius. He first of all obtained
the quantity of tobacco which he proposed--no doubt with the
assistance of more than one confederate--to smuggle ashore. He then
proceeded to divide this into two, each of which formed one strand.
Afterwards he made these strands into a rope, every bit of it being
tobacco. But then he took a three-strand hawser and laid this over the
tobacco, so that when the hawser was finished no one could suspect the
tobacco without first cutting or unlaying the rope. I have not been
able to discover how this trick was ever suspected. Nothing less than
an accident or the information of a spy could possibly lead to
detection in such a clever case.

There were all sorts of varieties of concealments now practised since
the "scientific" period of smuggling had come in. A