Sometimes tubs of spirits were packed up in sacks and packs of wool and thus conveyed from the coast into the interior of the country; and in the seizing of some goods at Guernsey it was found that tea had been packed into cases to resemble packages of wine which had come out of a French vessel belonging to St. Malo.  Nor was the owner of a certain boat found at Folkestone any novice at this high-class art.  Of course those were the days when keels of iron and lead were not so popular as they are to-day, but inside ballast was almost universal, being a relic of the mediaeval days when so much valuable inside space was wasted in ships.  In this Folkestone boat half-a-dozen large stones were used as ballast, which was a very natural thing for such a craft.  But when these stones came to be examined they were found to have been hollowed out and to have been fitted with tin cases which were filled with spirits.  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.