The numerous publications upon China, from the large folios of the
Jesuits, which record their triangulation of the empire over a century
ago, down to the later books, which afford every detail of the strange
people occupying the “flowery kingdom,” render an account, of what came
under observation, during the time the Mississippi, lay in the waters
of China, almost superfluous. Yet during our stay, the state of the
Celestials was rather anomalous; owing to the efforts of a portion of
the immense population under the lead of an insurgent chief, Thaeping,
to overthrow the existing or Tartar government. This rebellion has been
continued so long now, that it threatens to become _chronic_.
At the time of these intestine troubles, the great number of ladrones
or land-pirates, who infest the vicinity of the densely-populated
cities, whose desperate fortunes, make them indifferent to what
government they may be under, generally seize upon the opportunity of
plundering, and the foreign hongs, or factories of the American and
European merchants, are always an object of attack, from the quantity
of specie that is known, or believed to be within their vaults. The
existence of the rebellion, and the heavy freshets in the Pekiang
causing much loss and distress, had also made the ladrones in the
vicinity of Canton very threatening; and a few days after our return
from Japan, our ship was ordered to proceed to Blenheim Reach, to
communicate with the American consul, and to afford with our force, any
aid that we could in the protection of American property at Canton,
which, notwithstanding the representations made to our government,
has been indebted for some time past to the protection of the guns
of a little English brig-of-war, which lay off the factories. But
if one thinks of the un-American manner, and the cockneyism, which
marks nearly all of the United States merchants, who abide and much
do congregate near the walls of Canton, perhaps the protection, which
an English flag would give, is more to their taste, such at least
is my opinion. It occasions no effort to appreciate the hospitality
of these people. Should you be a merchant-man, and indebted to
their brokerage for the purchase of tea and silk, or the sale of
opium, their spacious-chambers are soon put at your disposal; but if
unfortunately an officer from some national vessel, your way to the
single China-hotel, with its pent-up rooms, infuriate musquitoes, and
pleasant fried-rat odors, will not be impeded by them in the slightest
degree. During an extended stay, they might patronise you, if having
the financiering of the ship to do, with an invitation to a dinner, or
one to a “tiffin;” but they will scarcely be heard from again, unless
when they anticipate an _emeute_ of the Ladrone population, when a
man-of-war would immediately get representations about the necessity
for some force to protect their coffers.
Blenheim Reach is about ninety miles from Hong Kong, and fifteen from
Canton, whose port, together with Whampoa Reach, separated from it by
paddy-field islands, it may be called. It was up this passage that
the English ship “Blenheim” went to Canton, and was enabled to turn
the enemy’s flank during the late war. Ahead of us laid the huge old
East Indiamen, looking like line-of-battle ships, and waiting till
they got aboard their twenty thousand chests, and not far from them
the _Aberdeen clippers_, which may take rank as such only when the
_American_ clippers are away. At Whampoa, off a collection of most
forbidding-looking houses, built over the muddy water, composing the
Chinese town, there lay the foreign ships, the mandarin watch-boats,
the junks, the chop-hulks from which stores are supplied, the
protestant and catholic floating-bethels for the good of souls, and the
well-armed opium-schooners whose cargoes destroy bodies.
We laid in Blenheim Reach under the whole, hissing, hot sun of August
and September. There being a heavy fresh in the river at the time of
our arrival, the banks were overflown, and our ship did not swing
at her anchors for some days. Old China street at Canton was a foot
under water, and you reached the entrance to the hongs through the
foreign garden, in a sedan-chair, or on the backs of wading coolies.
During the height of the swollen current, dead Chinamen floated down
and hung in our wheels; and when the water subsided, the exhalation of
fields of alluvial black mud, and the visits of furious flowery-kingdom
mosquitoes, who, like the ghostly breeches of Mickey Free’s father,
were ever going between us and sleep, neither contributed to the
healthfulness nor comfort of our anchorage. Our comforts were further
increased by looking upon scenery which was unrelieved except by a
litchee grove here and there. The weather was terribly hot, and if the
thermometer had been longer, it would have probably been hotter; with
ratan-mat and bamboo-pillow you sought a spot under the awnings of the
hurricane or poop deck, that you might half-restless and half-snoozing
pass the night, while during the day the windsails were of little
use, and drop and drop came down the tar from the rigging. Boils and
other cutaneous eruptions affected the crew, with annoyances greater
than those of Job, and yet they had not the salubrious climate of a
Palestine in which to endure them. The dislocating-jaw beef, and fowls,
and fresh food furnished us by the Chinamen, together with watery
vegetables, nearly destitute of any nutritious qualities, were only
partly compensated for by the half-fresh cherrymoya, custard-apple,
banana, or splendid persimmon—persimmons splendid! Sometimes we would
have a thunder-storm which would purify the atmosphere for a time,
but back would soon come the stagnated, sweltering temperature, which
neither _white_ slippers nor grass-cloth could make more comfortable,
and which made the staid, starched, stiff collar, soon bow its points,
and relax into the opaque, prostrate Byronic. Every one who could, like
the personator of _Minerva_ at Mrs. Leo Hunter’s _fétê champétre_,
carried a fan. Such weather we had for two months.
Occasionally, during the month of August, we had requests for aid from
merchant-captains arriving, who represented their crews in a state of
mutiny. After the confinement of the men, a consular court is usually
held on board to adjudicate the difficulty. I attended one of these,
and was surprised to see what an entirely _ex-parte_ affair it is;
the examination is absurd. The captain’s testimony is mainly if not
entirely depended on, and if a bad man, may not only maltreat his crew,
without any one to confront him effectively with the fact, but after
having contracted with his men, for high wages perhaps, in California,
on arriving in China, for some insubordination, prefers a charge of
mutiny; the men are put in irons, the consul’s decision forfeits their
wages, and thus a speculation is made for the owners. If not this, for
the acts of one or two bad men in a ship, the whole crew are put in
irons and punished indiscriminately. One fellow brought aboard of the
Mississippi in irons, called a “mutineer,” and subsequently regularly
shipped, would not have mutinied against a sheep.
We received almost daily rumors of contemplated attacks upon the hongs.
The latter part of August, the English brig-of-war “Lily” (_painted?_)
passed up the river to Canton, being of light draft. In the event of
troubles, the custody of specie and silver-plate on board of these
vessels, pays a handsome percentage to the commander. A survey of the
Macao passage of the river was made with the hope that our steamer
might be gotten up to Canton, but the collection of a bar at a barrier
which had been made in the river during the war, by the Chinese, made
the water too shoal to attempt it. We sent up a body of marines,
and howitzers in the storeship Supply, which vessel lay for a long
time off the city. The imperial authorities at the city were much
excited; fleets of war-junks passed up and down the river in search of
undiscoverable foes; and the governor of the city recommended to his
pig-tail community not to celebrate the “Feast of the Lanterns,” as it
might give the rebels an opportunity for outbreak, and also notified
that in the event of an attack, it must be a _sauve qui peut_ business
with them, as he could not extend them protection.
Meanwhile the officers of the ship, in an armed fast-boat, paid
frequent visits to the city; at times for visits merely and purchases,
and at others, when emergency seemed to require, with armed cutters
and howitzers. The objects on the route all became familiar, as if
going up and down one of our own rivers—the pagodas, the water-side
joss-houses—the rows of the plantain-trees skirting the fields,
and the big-sailed craft going lazily along in the mud canals that
intersected them. We soon came and went through the huge water-craft
moored head and stern in the approach to the city, and through the
lanes of the innumerable small boats, with their three hundred thousand
water population, or noticed the small ferryboats, in which, at the
fourth of a cent each, thirty thousand people cross and re-cross daily,
without interest almost. You might stroll the streets beyond the
walls, and purchase the curiously-carved ivory and the many elegant
and ingeniously-made articles of China, but the shopkeeper was in
considerable trepidation and would speculate much on the “too muchee
bobbery,” as he called the anticipated fighting.
I was there during the feast of the Lanterns. In going out from the
solitary hotel, kept by Acow—_compradore_ of one of our former
commissioners to China, from whom, I suppose, he learned the little
English he knew—you generally, through the volunteer aid of the
Jemmy-Twitcher Mongols, immediately part with your kerchief and
gloves, and it is no matter that you saw the celestial who took them,
for if he once mixes with the crowd you could no more undertake to
individualize him than you would be able to tell a particular spoke in
a revolving-wheel. By you, passes a fellow with as much timber locked
around his neck, for some offence, as a mortar-board would contain. Of
the innumerable gongs beating, one struck at intervals attracts your
attention. The fellow who strikes it is walking the street in front of
a bare-backed malefactor, whose queue is wrapped around his head, and
whose hands are tied behind him. As he walks, at each tap of the gong
from the man in front, a following attendant lashes him with split
ratan. It would take too long to enumerate the scenes witnessed in a
Chinese street. During the day the bonzes marched through the streets
attired in their yellow robes, stopping at intervals to chin-chin
joss, by beating on gongs. At night tall prosceniums and staging are
erected at the entrances of streets, just inside of their gates,
and extending up as high as the roofs of the houses. These are most
gorgeously and grotesquely decorated, and lit up with large fantastic
lanterns and small lamps, looking like hundreds of illuminated lemons;
adown either side of the streets are hung other lanterns in front of
each store-door. The expense of all this, and the compensation of the
performers, who represent the “sing-song” on the stage, and go on with
their horrible caterwauling to the great delight of the throng in the
narrow street below, is paid by subscription from the occupants of the
street. An old Chinaman, of whom we purchased chess-men, advised us not
to be away from our hotel too long, as there were many “two facee—no
good pigeon-men”—in the crowd, who had no love for foreigners.
At the time of this visit, I saw many of the celebrities about Canton;
the remarkable and magnificent gardens of the old China millionaire
_Howqua_, where artificial landscapes, cascades, and plants, trained in
the exact image of all kinds of animals, are to be seen in perfection;
old Curiosity street, with its costly jade-stone spectacles, &c., and
by accident, the spot, where some young Englishmen, captured during the
war, were taken to, and beheaded by the Chinese.
The last of September, we were relieved by the arrival of the
Susquehanna, when we ran down the river to Cum-sing-moon. As we
approached the anchorage, we discovered the storeship Southampton, not
long from Valparaiso. When she was about a thousand miles from Luzon,
she picked up a boat, containing three men and a boy. When brought
aboard, their long, black hair, high cheek-bones, and dusky complexion
indicated a Malayan origin. All they could say was “_Sallie Baboo_”
and they were most likely driven out to sea, from the group of that
name, while passing with vegetables in their frail shallop, between
the islands. A building having been rented at Macao, as an hospital
for the sick and infirm of our squadron, the _Sallie Baboos_ were kept
ashore there for some time. The boy, about twelve years old, evinced
some sprightliness, and got hold of some sentences in English, but the
confidence to speak a single word in our language, was a plant of the
slowest possible growth with the older ones.
We found the Powhatan and Macedonian at anchor in the harbor.
They had been laying there for exercise in target-firing and in
squadron boat-sailing. Unfortunately one of the officers of the
Powhatan—Lieutenant Adams, from exposure to the intense heat of the
sun, while engaged in the latter duty—was taken very ill, and a very
few days after our arrival, our ship performed the melancholy office
of conveying his remains to Macao for interment. On our arrival in
the roads at that place, we found there the French surveying-frigate
Constantine, who, upon seeing our colors half-mast, in compliment
half-masted her own. The day of interment the weather was so rough,
that a Portuguese lorcha had to be employed to take the body and its
escort to the shore. His remains were followed to the grave by his
messmates, the officers of the French ship, those of the Portuguese
garrison ashore, and proper escort of marines with ship’s band. He was
buried in a beautiful spot in the English cemetry, adjoining the garden
“_Ubi Camoens opus egregium compossuisse fertur_,” and by the side of
a brother-officer—Lieutenant Campbell, of the United States schooner
Enterprise, and the grave of Edmond Roberts, special diplomatic agent
of the United States to several Asiatic courts, who died in the East in
1836.
October the 31st, the Mississippi returned to _Cumsing-moon_, which in
the celestial dialect means, “Golden-sun-born-pass,” but the man who
could so call it, must be
“—— of imagination all compact:
See Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt!”
The most naked, barren, desolate prospect; a partly-cultivated
island, between which and the main-land, the muddy river sweeps in a
current—and a collection of Chinese hovels, which form nests for the
river-pirates, who rob fast and post boats on their way to Canton and
levy on the fortunes of the fishermen, compose the attractive picture,
which the _Golden-sun-born-pass_ presents.
Here is the principal anchorage of the opium-hulks; and Great Britain,
a party to the “holy alliance,” that said that no member of the
Bonaparte family should sit on the throne of France, and yet has her
legions side by side with those of Louis Napoleon—who keeps a squadron
on the coast of Africa for the suppression of the slave-trade, here
displays more of her boasted consistency, and covers with her flag,
a traffic more iniquitous. It is nothing to England, that opium is
an article contraband of the laws of China; from the enticing poison
produced in her possessions, she gets a large income in revenue; her
ships bring the drug to China, and smuggle it in armed vessels along
its coasts; and with her protection, the vile poppy has medicined
thousands to a sleep that knows no waking. She cares for syce silver,
not for bodies or souls. But it must be said, that the Parsees with
their “Benares” opium, and even Jonathan, though he does not fly his
flag, have a share in the traffic; that some of the drug is even grown
in China, and that a trade thrust upon that country by the throats
of English cannon, is now connived at, and embarked in by corrupt
mandarins, who share in the profits of its smuggling, while their
duties require them to discover such offenders, and bring their heads
under the executioner’s sword.
[Illustration: _LITH. OF SARONY & Co. NEW YORK._
CHINA.]
A considerable portion of the opium consumed in China, is produced
in its southern departments. Its growth is as much a violation of
the imperial law, as its introduction into the Cinque ports by
foreigners is violative of treaty stipulation. The bribed mandarin
governors derive a large income, by looking another way in their
official perambulations when a poppy-seed field is reached; or it may
be that the _papaver somniferum_ has such an effect upon them, that
they go past in a somnambulic state. There being no edict requiring
of mandarins a knowledge of botany, they have no desire to learn the
difference between a poppy-flower and any other. Add to this the
demoralized condition, or rather the moral-less condition, of a large
infanticide-practising population, who once having gotten the habit,
become willing victims of the drug, and its introduction and continued
consumption, becomes an easy matter;—they first endured, they now
embrace.
There are Chinese who contend that opium is good for the health. It
may, like intoxicating liquors, be used in moderation, but its use once
acquired, its strides upon the appetite of its votary, are far more
speedy, and fatal in results.
The story of opium-using—which is synonymous with its excessive use,
need hardly be repeated here; how, instead of the brains out, and
the man dying, the brain dies and the man may still live on; how the
robustness of youth is suddenly changed into the infirmity of old age;
the limbs shrivel, the chest sinks, the shoulders stoop, the bones
protrude—the sunken cheeks, the ghastly hue of the complexion, the
extreme attenuation of the neck, causing the head to sink between the
shoulders, and appear disproportionate, and the man to move about a
walking skeleton; or how the debauchee once accustomed to the use of
the drug, becomes as secure in its grasp as an ox in the coils of the
huge serpent of Brazil—the successive stages gone through, when in its
power; the victim wrapped in dreamy hallucination is fiendishly mocked
with the imaginary enjoyment of a seventh heaven;—the alternation to
a supernatural excitement; the eye glaring demoniacally, and all the
brutish passions of human nature possessing him, or the look changing
to the listless, leaden, dull, inane leer of idiocy, when the curtain
falls upon the death-rattles of agony. Two instances of the excessive
use of opium came more immediately under my observation; one a jeweller
at Macao, who was a hale, hearty-looking man upon the occasion of our
first visit, yet on our return from Japan, had undergone frightful
emaciation from its effects. The other was a Chinese teacher, who
had been employed for the purpose of putting communications into
the mandarin dialect. He was buried at sea, on the passage of the
Susquehanna from Loo-Choo to Bonin, and those who witnessed his death,
represent it as one of terrible contortion and suffering.
The opium stored on the hulks at Cum-sing-moon, comprises the Benares,
the Patna, and Malwa. It is put up in balls and packed in chests. On
its receipt, the custodian of the hulk proceeds to assort it, and
with a view of testing its quality, and preparing its samples for the
examination of the purchaser, small quantities of each case are boiled
in water, strained through brown paper, and then, by the heat of a
fire, reduced to the consistency of thick paste or molasses, which it
somewhat resembles, when it is placed in little cups.
The owners generally reside in Canton, where most of the sales are
made; and it is a specie business. A case may sometimes sell for six
hundred dollars, and there have been times, when it would sell for
double that amount. The article, like our most southern staple, is
liable to great fluctuation in price, and large fortunes have been made
and lost by it.
The following extracts from some old letters, nearly obliterated, found
floating about the harbor, from houses in Canton to their agents on the
hulks at “the Moon,” as it is briefly called, will give an idea of the
business _operandi_:—
“To-day I have passed two delivery letters on you, each for three (3)
chests of Malwa opium, both in favor of the Chinaman Ehing, wherefore
you will take no suspicion about the delivery. Both these letters are
drawn by me for six chests of Malwa.
“I will also thank you to pass one of the two chests, Nos. 1 and 2;
pass one of them among the six.”
Another ran: “We have before us your note of the 3d, relating to order
No. 852, for one chest Malwa, and note that you had retained the order,
the holder declining to take the opium.
“Having now, however, agreed to take the drug under the same order, you
will please deliver it accordingly, but without reduction, as he must
take it, having already paid the money. We leave it to your judgment,
however, to allow a small reduction, should he insist upon it.”
These ships are well armed and numerously manned, mostly with Lascars.
The living on them is very sumptuous. Some years ago Cum-sing-moon
was visited by a terrible typhoon, when these hulks broke from their
moorings; some were driven entirely out of the harbor, others came
in contact, stove and sunk. The United States sloop-of-war Plymouth
was lying there at the time, and got considerable salvage for property
saved.
The river-pirates make this place their rendezvous during the night.
They would seize and rob boats just off the mouth of the harbor:
their boats are fast sailers. The fast-boat of our compradore, when
bringing us provisions from Macao, had to run a daily gauntlet of the
rascals. But a young Portuguese officer, in command of a small armed
lorcha, used to pursue them with much success. One night, about nine
o’clock, having got intelligence of their whereabouts, while we lay
at Cum-sing-moon, he ran quietly into the harbor, and putting his
men in Sampan-boats, he fell into a nest of them and peppered the
rascals right and left. Their crafts are then taken to Macao and sold,
furnishing a kind of prize-money.
The long and fast-sailing mandarin-boats, that smuggle the opium,
usually get here in the evening. The captains of the hulks make them
anchor some distance from their ships, because of their carelessness
in the use of powder; some of them would quietly sit over an open tank
of it and smoke their pipes, believing that if they are blown up it
is a fatality which they can not prevent. These boats are armed, and
well manned, and when there is no wind to expand their large sails,
they pull as many as a hundred sweep-oars moving through the water
like great centipedes. After their large crews have had their paddy
chow-chow, in the most clamorous and discordant manner, they proceed to
chin-chin joss, as the sun goes down, by banging on gongs and tom-toms;
but before midnight they have paid down their pile of specie, gotten
their chests of the drug aboard, and are moving off up the river to
Canton.
We left Cum-sing-moon and its enlivening prospects in the middle of
November, and went over to Hong Kong, and thence we triangulated, as
it were, to Macao and Whampoa, and so back. At Macao we spent our
time, when ashore, by promenades on the Praya, where, at eventide,
the dark-eyed daughters of the decayed Portuguese aristocracy cast
furtive glances at the stranger, and listened to the music of one of
our squadron-bands, which the commodore, who was living at Macao,
had ashore with him; or strolled through the barrier-gate and out
on the _campo_; or witnessed the wonderful nerve displayed by the
knife-throwing Chinese jugglers in the street.
While laying in the roads at Macao, a young Russian officer who had,
with a squadron from his country, visited the port of Nangasaki,
brought the intelligence that the emperor of Japan had died after
our visit, and that the Japanese said they would have to mourn him
for _three_ years, during which time they could have no transactions
or negotiations with foreigners. We thought the demise might be
true—perhaps a _hari-kari_ hastened it, but that the latter thing was
all “leather and prunella;” the emperor might have died, but another,
like poor Pillicoddy, must turn up, when we next visited the country.
About this time the Plymouth, which had been sent, on our departure
from Loo-Choo in August, to the Bonin islands, arrived at Macao,
bringing the sad intelligence that a boat from that ship containing one
of her lieutenants—Lieutenant Mathews, of New York—and fourteen men,
out on a fishing excursion, while the ship was lying at Peel island,
had been lost in a sudden typhoon on the 5th of October, and that all
hands had perished.
Preparations being on foot for the return of the squadron to Japan,
as soon as the storeship Lexington should arrive, and the services of
the storeship Supply being needed for the transportation from China of
coal for the steamers, a small English steamer recently built at Hong
Kong, was chartered on behalf of the United States government, to take
her place off the factories at Canton. She was armed with four guns,
and a lieutenant, passed-midshipman, and one engineer ordered to her,
besides being manned from the squadron—the American flag waved over
the “Queen!”
On the 19th of December we stood up the river with the Hon. Humphrey
Marshall, United States commissioner to China, on board, who was going
to take possession of his residence at Canton. We reached Whampoa at
three o’clock, and found there the British war-steamer Rattler, that
had not long before taken an active part in the capture of Rangoon. Her
officers had many a kriss and spear trophy of the enemy, and around her
engines were well-cut Buddhist idols in marble, which they had brought
away with them.
The next day the commissioner left for Canton, and beside receiving
his salute of seventeen guns, was accompanied in barges by a suite of
officers, an escort of marines, and a band of music—a “grand function”
accompanying the movements of prominent foreign personages, always
has a great effect with the impressionable Celestials. The American
shipping in the Reach fired a number of guns as Mr. Marshall passed up,
and dipped their colors. The party accompanying remained in the city
some days; I availed myself of the opportunity of making the circuit of
the walls, and in company with the chaplain of the ship and a messmate,
we started in the morning, Rev. S. W. Bonney, a resident missionary,
most kindly acting as conductor. He has been in China eight years and
speaks the language. To take the tramp considerable perseverance is
necessary. You have to thread your way through streets so narrow, that
at times you can easily touch the houses on either side by extending
your hands, down into which the sun never comes, densely packed with
human beings, and over granite flagging, for ever kept muddy by the
innumerable feet in motion over them from day-dawn to midnight. Then
you must keep on the alert and quickly step aside to the sill of some
shopdoor, or you may be run into by one of the thousand porters—the
sole conveyances of Chinese cities—whose short grunt in your rear, as
he toddles beneath the burden suspended from the bamboo-pole on his
shoulder, warns you to get out of his way; or perhaps you may get a
punch in the rear from the ferruled shalves of some high functionary
or rich merchant’s sedan-chair, as they rest on the shoulders of the
coolies, who carry him along at a dog-trot. On our route we stopped
in a number of shops. In one there was seated an Albino-Chinese,
seventy-five years old. A rat-merchant informed us that his stock on
hand was rather light now, but would be larger in a day or two; while
in a turning-establishment, we were shown the Chinese lathe which only
turns half way. The perpendicular red and gilded signs to the shops
were read to us; such as “May the customers come from the west, like
clouds, and when they have purchased, may those from the east come.” We
visited a kind of aceldama—the Quan-tung province execution ground—a
filthy triangular square in the lower part of the suburbs, running
to the river; the place was repulsive in the extreme. On a cross,
suspended so that his feet just cleared the ground, had been strangled
a culprit, above his head an inscription telling the offence for which
he had suffered; while under a shed, near by, was a pile of heads,
their long queus matted in blood. The executions by decapitation,
during our stay, were very numerous; fifty-nine were to be executed
the next day. The culprits are made to kneel, a man stands behind them
and raises both of their arms backward, as you would a pump-handle,
which brings the neck comparatively horizontal, when one blow from
the cleaver-like sword of the practised executioner, severs the head
from the trunk. A woman who had killed her liege lord was to be cut to
pieces. The laws of China are very severe in the punishment of female
offenders—“Women’s Rights” are below par—and it is a land which would
not be adapted for the residence of the “strong-minded” women of our
own country, Chinese prophecy having foretold the downfall of their
empire by the machinations of women.
We passed through one corner of the city proper, which, though
permitted by treaties, is still a risky business. We were quick in
our movements and were scarcely observed by the Tartar soldier on
the look-out for rebels. This gave us an opportunity of seeing the
thickness of the wall. We went in at the gate of the “Rising Sun,”
crossed a small hypotenuse, and came out at the gate of the “Tranquil
Ocean.”
We next emerged into an open space on the north side of the city,
used for drilling their soldiers, and where archery is practised on
horseback at full speed, the most successful shot having as his prize,
his name recorded in a temple near by. We crossed the place with a
number of boys crying after us as we walked, “Fanqui! Fanqui!” (foreign
devil), and passed under a recent triumphal arch of granite, erected
by subscription and by imperial permission. The inscription would be
news to the English: it told in grandiloquent terms, how the outside
barbarians during the war, were repulsed by Chinese valor from their
walls. Not far from here we stopped at a refreshment-house, and got
tea and sweetmeats. Here, as at every other point, if we stopped for
a moment, a crowd collected around. One would hold up an infantile
“pig-tail” to the window, that he might see the “outside barbarian”
inside, eat; while an old fellow created considerable laughter by
pointing to my mustache—the wearing of the mustache among the Chinese
indicating a grandfather. There not being any house for some distance,
we walked close under the walls for some time. They were quite high,
built of stone, capped with brick, almost covered with creepers and
vines, and had at intervals projecting angles for look-out purposes.
We were now out of the suburbs, having on our left a valley shaded
with the bamboo and banyan, and containing granite vat-shaped wells,
from which the water was being continually carried within the walls.
We ascended a high hill on which a number of goats were browsing, and
seated ourselves on the steps of a fort. This place was captured by
the English after much difficulty, being compelled to drag their guns a
long distance from the river, over rice-fields; and here it was that,
after getting possession, they got the mortifying intelligence that the
commodore had granted a truce. The inscription on the gateway told how
it had been placed there to guard the city, and to watch those who came
to plunder. From here you could see over the walls, and look down upon
the city within, the houses of which did not appear more numerous than
outside; and we could discern the consular-flags at the hongs, that we
had left some hours before, in the extreme distance to the east.
It is almost to be regretted that the English should have consented
to treat with the enemy, and given up this fort, when they had the
whole city at their feet, and could have given these treacherous,
malignant, cruel, dictatorial, self-conceited, vain people, a lesson in
enlightenment, which would have lasted them a long time, and procured a
little more deference for the “rest of mankind.”
Descending from here we had a sight of an old mosque, and also of a
dead-house, where the Chinese frequently allow their deceased relatives
to remain for six months at a time, until their bonzes shall designate
some _lucky_ spot in which, in their trunk-of-tree-looking coffin, they
may be buried. In a hill-side cemetery we saw persons worshipping at
the tombs of their relatives, and burning joss-paper; also noticed
a Chinese funeral, the mourners in white. We returned by the western
suburbs, and after stopping a while to take a look at the oil-mongers’
hall—each calling in Canton having a similar building—a kind of
’change, we elbowed our way to the hongs which we reached about three
o’clock, having left them at ten in the morning, during the whole
of which time, Mr. Bonney, while very polite in his attentions and
explanations to us, like one properly imbued with the spirit of his
mission, as he is, distributed his “Yesoo” or Christian tracts to those
whom he would first ascertain, could read them in Chinese, being nearly
the only medium by which it may be hoped to introduce Christianity into
that country.
A jaunt around the walls of Canton one is glad _to have_ taken; you are
subjected to annoyances and names, if not violence. Some called after
us, “Kill them as the brute,” and others made sign of throat-cutting,
mostly young people, who were reproved by Mr. Bonney in their language,
still it was best to keep on at a brisk pace, and obey fully the
injunction given to Lot’s wife. This was discreet. We escaped a shower
of the missiles with which those who adventure the tramp are sometimes
saluted; two only being thrown at us, one, not very large, taking me
back of the neck, and the other falling between one of my companions
and myself.
In the evening we crossed the river and paid a visit to the pagan
temple of Honan, that large structure, where the disciples of Buddha
worship him with his three faces, representing the past, present, and
future. The buildings of this temple cover a space of thirty-five
acres, and an orange-garden, and place for burying the deceased priests
and the wealthy dead, fifteen acres more. The main building, whose
approach is under a noble growth of banyan-trees, is over, one hundred
feet square, filled with colossal demon images of wood and gilt, who
keep off evil spirits, together with twenty-four gods of pity. The
number of priests is between one and two hundred, all eating at the
same table, though vegetables and rice supply the place of black broth.
Then they show their porcine affinity; having there the sacred pigs—so
fat that their eyes may not be seen, and who are fattened till they
die. The time of our visit was after sundown. We visited the apartments
of the abbot of the establishment, who was evidently just recovering
from the effects of opium. This old fellow, once almost felt persuaded
to become a Christian; that is, he almost made up his mind to come
to the Christian country of the United States, but his infirmity and
the dislike to leave a certain support for the balance of his days,
prevented it. To say that he would have been willing to change his
creed, would be almost a negation of terms. What religious creed has
a Chinaman? If any, it is a bundle of negatives. He thinks nothing in
such a connection: he believes nothing. How can you change him from a
position, when you do not know where he stands? how can you change his
belief when he has none? You had as well beat the air.
This old abbot desired Mr. Bonney to tell us that there was a Chinese
lady who had reached Canton from Peking, who was desirous of uniting
her fortunes for the balance of her days to a foreigner: her feet were
only some two and a half inches long. We desired him to be informed
that it “Was not at all in our way.”
The next day I left Canton for the ship in one of the barges, which
came up for the purpose of carrying down specie for the use of the
squadron. They were all well armed; though the river-pirates are
always, by some fraternal telegraph, posted of the movements of
treasure to Whampoa, they will scarcely dare attack a man-of-war’s
boats, yet if not watched, they are willing to attempt, the apparently
accidental, running down of a boat with treasure, that they may
subsequently fish it up, knowing as they do every spot.
The 25th of December—a drizzly, disagreeable Sunday, that was not
“Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusion of our
childish days, and transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands
of miles away, back to his own fireside and his quiet home,”—saw
us passing the fortifications of the Bogue, which stupidly neglect
crown-batteries with admirable physical formation for them, by which
the rigging, tops, and spars of an enemy’s ship might be sorely
troubled, bound down through the Cap-sing-moon passage, back of Lantow
island, to Hong Kong. The next day the Lexington arrived.
The news of the death of Vice-President King we had seen, but the
official intelligence we did not get for some time. On the 29th of
December, in honor of the deceased, each American man-of-war in the
harbor, fired minute guns at daybreak, mid-day, and sundown. In this
they were very courteously joined by the English flag-ship Winchester,
commanded by Admiral Sir Fleetwood Pellew, son of Lord Exmouth of naval
renown.
The beginning of 1854 found us in the harbor of Hong Kong, preparing
for departure for Japan, and awaiting the arrival of the next oriental
mail-steamer. The intervening time was occupied in coaling the
storeships, and in an occasional dramatic performance on one of the
steamers; a thing not at all calculated to improve discipline; whose
burnt-cork and dramatic performances make “Rome howl” much oftener
than good sailors; besides, the lights employed not contributing to
the safety of a man-of-war from fire. At such times the quarter-deck
awnings are usually elevated, and draped with the numerous flags;
underneath, chandeliers of windsail-hoops and lashed bayonets and
suspended overhead, the guns rolled out of the way, the mainmast
decked with palm-branches; and when the music arises in the floating
ball-room, the guests flit in the mazes of the dance, and nothing
interrupts the twinkling feet of the _en-bon-point_ English women
save an occasional ring-bolt in the deck. Tables were spread in the
different messes. At such times, “H. E., Sir Samuel, K. C. B., governor
and commander-in-chief, and vice-admiral,” and the “major-general, K.
H., of the forces,” and the officers of the “59th,” and foreign naval
officers, were aboard.