1882        Alden, W.L. 1882. "Sailors' Songs." _Harper's New Monthly Magazine_ (July 1882): 281-6.

Alden mentions the first (?) "Shallow Brown":

Come get my clothes in order
Shallow, Shallow, Brown.
The packet sails tomorrow.
Shallow, Shallow, Brown.

And what Hugill later called "Hilonday" -- whether this actually contains a "hi-lo" or if it was just scanned that way, is highly debatable. Other possibilities are "Highland" and, I think, "Island Day":

O Boney was a warrior.
(Cho) Ah hilonday.
O sigh her up, my yaller gals, a hi, hilonday

And lastly are Alden's general comments on "hi-lo," in relation to "Hilo, my Ranzo way," and which I already mentioned in this thread:

In the following song not only is the mysterious Randso mentioned, but a word of fathomless meaning and of very frequent recurrence in sailor songs is introduced. Perhaps Max Müller could attach some meaning to "hilo," but in that case he would do more than any sailor ever did. It will not do to suggest that it is really two words--"high" and "low." It occurs in too many other songs as an active verb to leave us any room to doubt that to "hilo" was to be, to do, or to suffer something. It can not be gathered from the insufficient data at our command whether or not the act of "hiloing" was commendable in a sailor, but from the frequency with which the fair sex was exhorted in song to ''hilo," it is evident that it was held to be a peculiarly graceful act when executed by a young girl.

So, whether originally a nonsense vocable, "hi-lo" had evidently begun to become part of grammatical constructions. Alden speaks as if he was familiar with several songs containing the phrase, even though he does not mention them specifically.