My voyage to Macao--General appearance of the port--Gambling propensities
of the Chinese--Compulsory emigration--Cruel treatment of coolies on board
ship--Disaster on the Paracelses reefs--The _Baracouns_--The grotto of
Camoens--The _Lusiads_--Contrast between Chinese and Japanese--Origin
of the yellow races: their appearance and language--Relation of the
dwellers in the Arctic regions to the people of China--Russian and
Dutch intercourse with the Celestials--East India Company's monopoly of
trade--Disputes on the opium question--Expiration of charter--Death of
Lord Napier of a broken heart--Lin-Tseh-Hsu as Governor of the Kwang
provinces--The result of his measures to suppress trade in opium--Treaty
of Nanking--War of 1856-1858--Treaty of Tien-tsin and Convention of
Pekin--Immense increase in exports and imports resulting from them.
I had confided to M. Vaucher, that most amiable of cicerones whom I
had been fortunate enough to meet at Canton, my great wish to go to
Macao and make a pilgrimage to the grotto where it is said Camoens, the
great Portuguese poet, wrote a portion of his most important work, the
_Lusiads_. M. Vaucher at once made arrangements for me to go to the
celebrated Portuguese settlement by river and sea, and placed one of his
own decked boats at my disposal. He even went so far as to choose a crew
for me, and to arm that crew with six rifles. Before I started he warned
me to keep in my cabin so as not to arouse the cupidity of the banditti,
who abound on the river, by appearing on deck.
"If," he said to me, "my men point out to you a suspicious-looking craft,
be on your guard against it. You may easily," he added, "recognize pirate
boats for yourself, for this reason, they always prowl about in groups
of three, so that each may help the others in case of bad weather or any
difficulty; a clever arrangement greatly facilitating their evil designs,
for the crews are rapidly transformed from harmless fishermen to fierce
pirates should occasion serve for doing a stroke of business."
In spite of these ominous warnings, however, my voyage passed over without
incident, and I arrived safely at the port of Macao, situated on the
southern extremity of a small peninsula of the island of Hiang-shang and
separated from the Chinese province of Canton merely by a wall, which is
in as ruinous a condition as is the more celebrated Great Wall of Tartary.
As we approached Macao a beautiful scene was spread out before us, wooded
hills dotted with charming villas, in which the wealthy English of
Hong-Kong spend much of the summer, and groups of picturesque rocks rising
from the curving shores of the lovely bay with its stretch of gleaming
white sand, to which the Portuguese, to whom Macao was ceded by the
Chinese, have given the appropriate name of the _Porto de Praya grande_.
Here swarms the teeming amphibious fishing population of Macao, and from
this perfect bow with its picturesque surroundings were shipped, alas!
for all too many years, thousands of coolies for the labour market of
Havana and Peru, who were many of them embarked under terribly tragic
circumstances.
[Sidenote: EMIGRATION AGENTS]
A true Celestial is in fact a born gambler, and indulges his instincts
to such an extent that when he has lost fortune, wife, and daughters he
finally stakes himself! This fact is well known to the emigration agents
not only of Macao, but of the other Chinese ports, where numbers were
formerly enrolled for service in Peru, Chili, the Philippine Islands, and
various places in Oceania with very little, if any, volition on their
own part. Emigration agents used to lie in wait for Chinese loungers,
and accost those who looked fairly robust politely, take them to the
flower-boats and other public resorts where opium was smoked, and if their
luckless victims still had any money left, their insinuating tempters
would entice them into some low gambling hell, where, after a few throws
of the dice, the ruin of the simple, confiding fellows was complete.
Then when the unfortunate Celestials had emptied their purses, and their
brains were muddled with opium or from the effects of debauchery, their
dim eyes were dazzled by the offer of a few piastres, and in exchange for
a trifling sum they signed away their liberty. When they came to their
senses they found they had bound themselves to leave their country.
The agents were careful when they got the poor fellows' signatures not
to let out how far from China were the sugar-cane plantations of the
Antilles or the guano isles of Peru. Their victims had only learnt one
fact thoroughly, and that was that their country is the centre of the
universe, the foreign nations surrounding it being looked upon as its
tributaries. If the emigrants asked where they were going, they were told
to some place very near the port of embarkation. This wicked deception
was really the cause of the terrible massacres of coolies to which many
captains of emigrant vessels were driven to save their ships and crews.
When after a few days' voyage a vessel had to touch at some port for any
reason, and the poor coolies packed away below the hatchways saw above
the barriers or through the portholes, the bright verdure of an island of
Oceania, or the distant blue mountains of the American continent, they at
once jumped to the conclusion that their journey was at an end, and were
wild to leave the vessel, no matter at what cost. Some even in mid-ocean,
out of sight of land, became so heart-broken from home-sickness that they
quietly packed up the few things belonging to them and jumped into the sea
with them. Now and then a few of these would-be suicides were fished out
again by order of the captain, and would calmly explain their action by
some such speech as this: "We want to go back to our own country." Truly
those who believe in metempsychosis cherish wonderful delusions!
On one occasion in the roadstead of Manila a swarm of coolies who thought
they had arrived at Havana mutinied because the captain would not allow
them to land. The crew of the vessel drove them back between decks at the
point of the sword, and they all perished from suffocation in a few hours
for want of air.
[Sidenote: A TERRIBLE CATASTROPHE]
Mutiny on their part was not, however, the only reason which sometimes led
to the sacrifice of a whole cargo of Asiatics. It was all too often a case
of might makes right, and when some convulsion of the elements rendered
it imperative to lighten a vessel, many a captain easily persuaded
himself that he had no choice but to save his crew by the sacrifice of
his human freight. This was the cause of the awful catastrophe off the
Paracelses reefs in the China Sea, which have as sinister a reputation as
the Goodwin Sands of the English coast, or the Baie des Trépassés of that
of Brittany. An unskilful captain had run his vessel on to the far-famed
reefs during the night, and seeing that it was hopeless to attempt to save
the five hundred coolies he was to have taken to Peru, he called his crew
together and told them to lower all the boats as quietly as possible.
This was done, and the captain saved himself and his sailors, leaving
the five hundred Celestials to their fate. The unfortunate coolies,
roused from their sleep by the bumping of the vessel against the rocks,
uttered piercing screams for help from the narrow space in which they were
confined, but we need scarcely add that the cautious captain had most
likely had the hatchways securely nailed down by his carpenter before he
left the ship.
When there is not much sea on, the Paracelses reefs can be clearly seen,
certain flat portions emerging here and there for a few inches above the
surface of the water. If there were never such a thing as a storm, and
no danger of the islets being swept by the waves, it would be possible
to live on them and even to support life by feeding on the turtles and
shell-fish abounding there; so that if the poor abandoned coolies had
been able to get out of their prison, who can tell but what they might
have saved themselves by clinging to the rocks till help arrived? As it
was, however, not a single emigrant was ever seen again. On the arrival
safe and sound at Hong-Kong of the captain and his crew, the English
authorities at once sent the fleetest steamer in the port to the scene of
the shipwreck, but those on that steamer saw nothing of the lost vessel,
which must have been quickly dashed to pieces. The Paracelses reefs were
completely under water, masses of surging foam hiding all trace of them,
so that had any of the coolies landed it would only have been to be swept
quickly away to the open sea by the force of the current.
Perhaps the saddest part of the tragedy was that the fate of so many human
creatures who had disappeared for ever in the depths of that blind and
reckless destroyer, the Ocean, should have raised so little regret, either
amongst the white-skinned traders in human flesh or the yellow-faced
Celestials of Macao and Hong-Kong. Maybe the latter themselves realize
that they really are too prolific, and are not sorry when their numbers
are lessened, no matter by what means.
[Sidenote: THE BARACOUNS]
When I was at Macao, I saw some of the so-called _baracouns_, where the
emigrants used to be shut up whilst awaiting their embarcation. These
_baracouns_ are the disused vaults of old convents, damp cellars of vast
extent, which were closed with strong bars when in use as pens for human
cattle. I am thankful to say these barracks are empty now, and are no
longer hot-beds of disease, for the European powers have interfered to put
a stop to the infamous traffic. It is a great gratification to me to know,
on the authority of the Quai d'Orsay officials, that an indignant article
on the subject, which I contributed to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, had
something to do with this most desirable step.
Emigration still goes on, on a very large scale, but it is conducted in a
less barbarous manner. No Chinese can now be made to embark against his
will, and his signature to a contract no longer compels him to leave his
native land if he has any means of support. As time goes on, it is to be
hoped that something like true liberty will really be the heritage of the
Chinese people, and already, where European ideas are gaining ground,
there are glimmerings of the dawn of a better state of things.
In China, as elsewhere, the glory of the Portuguese colonies is departed,
and the settlement at Macao is no exception to the rule. For many
years the name of that port was synonymous with decay and degradation.
The native population was more debased; the foreign traders were more
grasping, more greedy of gain, and more reckless of the means employed to
secure it than anywhere else, and one tri-colour flag, floating above a
hospital for invalid sailors, was the only note of true civilization to
redeem a deplorable state of things. The Sisters of Charity, who had come
all the way from France to soothe the sufferings of European mariners in
a strange land, taught the people of Macao that there was another love
than that of the piastre, another intoxication than that produced by the
fumes of opium: the love of helping others, the intoxication of zeal for
humanity. The much-abused and hated Macao is now the seat of a bishop
and the head-quarters of French missionary effort in China, whilst the
export trade has passed from the hands of the Portuguese into that of the
British, a truly beneficent change for all concerned.
My visit to the horrible _baracouns_ made me quite miserable, so vividly
did they bring before me all the horrors of the but recently-changed
system of compulsory emigration. I did my best to forget them; and on
the eve of my departure from Macao I went to see the grotto associated
with the name of Camoens. It will be remembered that the poet was banished
to Macao in 1556 on account of his quarrel with the authorities at Goa,
whither he had been sent after the fracas in the streets of Lisbon, in
which he wounded a royal equerry. He seems on the whole to have enjoyed
his exile, for he obtained a post with a large salary, and in two years
made quite a fortune. This so-called grotto is not really a cave now,
whatever it may originally have been, but is a picturesque little building
perched on a site commanding a beautiful view of the bay and its shipping.
Truly a fitting scene to inspire the rhapsody in which Camoens celebrated
the glory of his fellow-countryman, Vasco da Gama, and bemoaned the
sad fate of the beautiful Iñez de Castro, who, the story goes, after
being for some ten years the mistress of the Infante of Portugal, Dom
Pedro, was secretly married to him in 1354, and murdered by order of her
father-in-law in 1355. When the bereaved husband came to the throne he put
two of the murderers of his bride to death by torture; and, according to
Camoens, had the dead body of Iñez exhumed, dressed in royal robes, and
placed upon the throne she would have occupied had she lived, to receive
homage from the court.
[Sidenote: THE LUSIADS]
In the _Lusiads_, which has been called the "Epos of Commerce," and is to
the Portuguese what Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_ is to the English, a
vivid picture is given of the grandeur of the poet's native country in the
fifteenth century, when it was the rival of Spain, and a leader in the
colonization of distant lands. Perhaps one of the finest passages of this
remarkable poem, or series of poems, is that in which its author invokes
the mighty spirit of the storm, Adamastor, the fierce guardian of the Cape
of Good Hope, over whom Vasco da Gama and Magellan, also of Portuguese
birth, both triumphed. Now that time has proved how fatal to the real
welfare of both Spain and Portugal was the wealth of India and of Mexico,
one cannot help feeling that the poet may perhaps have had something of a
prophetic intuition of the future decadence of the peninsular kingdoms,
when he placed a giant in the pathway of the Conquistadores, to bar the
way against them.
It has only been for the last forty years that either China or Japan can
be said to have been open to Europeans. The history of the latter nation
is a proof of what an active, brave, and intelligent people may achieve
in the course of a few years; whilst that of the former illustrates all
that may remain undone where the natives of a country are convinced that
they have for forty centuries had an ideal government, the best possible
religion, and that the products of their industries are quite incapable of
improvement.
In passing judgment on the Chinese it must, however, be borne in mind
that their country is, by its natural boundaries, so completely isolated
from the rest of the world as to justify to some extent their intense
reluctance to open relations with the Red Devils of the West, as they call
all Europeans, whether fair or dark, though it was evidently the bright
auburn hair and rosy complexions of so many of the English visitors to
China which originated the name. The giving of this title is the only
vengeance the poor yellow skins have been able to take on those who
invaded their capital, pillaged their palaces and burnt their arsenals and
vessels, not to speak of the importation of the pernicious drug, opium,
which is responsible for the death of thousands every year.
[Sidenote: THE BOUNDARIES OF CHINA]
Independently of the Great Wall which once, though not very successfully,
defended China from the incursions of the Mongols and Manchus, the
Celestial Empire is bounded on the north by the great Gobi desert and the
grass steppes of Southern Mongolia; on the east by the sea of China, the
Eastern and the Yellow Seas; whilst on the west rise many a lofty chain
of mountains, their summits almost always crowned with snow. These latter
have not yet been all fully explored, though the name of many a hero
of discovery is connected with them, including that of Prince Henry of
Orleans, Margary and Marcel Monnier of quite recent fame.
In the vast circle enclosed within these boundaries of desert, mountain,
and sea, nearly every kind of vegetation can be successfully cultivated
in one district or another, whilst a considerable variety of types of
the great human family is met with, including members belonging to the
same groups as the people who have poured into Corea, Japan, Formosa, the
Philippine Islands, Indo-China, Siam, Kulja, and even a country so far
away as Persia.
As is well known, anthropologists are divided into two absolutely
distinct camps: the Polygenists, who claim that differences of species
evidenced by differences in height, in features, and in complexion, are
the result of the springing of the human race from different progenitors;
and the Monogenists, who believe in one primæval pair of parents only,
and look upon all differences between human creatures as caused by
accidental conditions modifying the primitive type. The latter assert
that it was within the boundaries mentioned above, on the central plateau
of the present Celestial Empire, that the first men appeared, and as
they multiplied, became diversified into yellow, black, white, and red,
remaining in their primitive home until, like a cup filled too full, they
overflowed in every direction to people other lands.
[Sidenote: THE MONGOLIANS]
It is not for me to decide the vexed question of whether the polygenists
or monogenists are in the right; those curious on the subject may refer to
the learned and deeply interesting works of Quatrefages, Haeckel, Darwin,
Huxley, Wallace and others, who have brought their critical acumen to
bear on the subject of the origin and antiquity of man. I merely wish to
emphasize here the fact that all agree in believing China to have been
occupied at an extremely remote date, and in admitting that, however the
changes may have come about, the human family is now undoubtedly divided
into five distinct groups: the brown, the black, the red, the white, and
the yellow. To the last belong the Mongolians, with whom alone we have now
to do, and which numbers, whatever its peculiarities, more representatives
than any other at the present day.
The skin of this prolific race is always yellow, sometimes pale, and
sometimes of a brownish tinge. The stiff straight hair of the Mongol is as
black as ebony, and the skull is of the so-called bracycephalic type, that
is to say, short as compared to its breadth, whilst that of the Chinese
and Tartars is mesaticephalic, or of medium length and breadth.
The face is round, the eyes are mere narrow slits, often decidedly
oblique, the nose is large, the cheek-bones are very prominent, and the
lips are thick.
At first sight it would appear that the Mongolian dialects all spring
from one primitive speech, but examination of evidence proves that this
is not the case, for they really belong to two very ancient branches of
human speech: the monosyllabic language of the Indo-Chinese races, and the
polysyllabic of the other Mongolians. The Tibetans, Burmans, Siamese, and
Chinese dialects are all monosyllabic, whilst those in use by the Coreans,
Japanese, Tartars, Kirghizes, Kalmucks, Buriats, Samoyedes, and Finns are
polysyllabic.
All the inhabitants of the continent of Asia, with the exception of a
few tribes of the extreme north, certain groups of Malays and Dravidians
in India, with some of the dwellers in the Mediterranean districts of
the south-west, belong to the so-called _Homo mongolicus_, or Mongolian
branch of the great human family, whilst in Europe it claims the Finns and
Lapps of the north, the Osmanlis of Turkey, and the Magyars of Hungary.
_Homo articus_, or the Polar group, is considered by the best authorities
to have originally formed part of the Mongolian branch, including the
Esquimaux, the Greenlanders, the Kamtchatkans, etc., all of whom, however,
as pointed out by Haeckel, the great German naturalist, have in the course
of centuries become so modified by the conditions of life in the Arctic
regions, that they may now be looked upon as forming a separate species.
The inhabitants of the extreme north are short and squat, their skulls
are of the mesaticephalic, or even in some cases of the dolichocephalic
type, that is to say, they are long in proportion to their breadth; their
eyes are narrow and oblique, as are those of the Mongols; they have high
cheek-bones and large mouths. Their hair is coarse and black, and their
skin of a more or less clear brown colour, sometimes approaching to white,
and sometimes to yellow, as amongst the Mongols, whilst now and then it
is reddish, as is that of the native Americans. The dialects spoken by
these remote tribes differ as much from those of other Mongols as they
do from the American forms of speech, and the probability is that these
inhabitants of the Arctic regions are really a degenerate branch of the
Mongol race, whose progenitors passed over into the north of America from
the north-east of Asia.
[Sidenote: CHINESE ISOLATION]
In spite of the fact that emigrants did occasionally drift across the
formidable northern and western boundaries of the vast Celestial Empire,
the one leading idea for many centuries, alike of rulers and ruled, was to
keep their land sacred from intruders, and discourage all intercourse with
other nations, whom the Chinese were trained from infancy to look upon as
utter barbarians. There is no more thrilling or more interesting story in
literature than that of how this cherished isolation was in the end broken
in upon and the delusion finally dispelled, that Europe was but a small,
sparsely populated district, whose inhabitants were eager to trade with
the yellow men because of the poverty of their own land.
The Russians and the Dutch, as well as the Portuguese, were eager in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to trade with China, and plant
permanent colonies within its boundaries, but self-interest alone prompted
their efforts, and they did nothing to open the eyes of the natives to
the true character of western civilization. The French, however, to
their honour be it spoken, were the pioneers of missionary effort, and
as has been well pointed out by Archibald Colquhoun in his _China in
Transformation_, page 43, "the earlier knowledge of the West acquired by
China, and that of China acquired by the West, were mainly achieved by
French missionaries; no French Government ever sent a mission to Pekin
to seek merely advantages of trade," and it was not until 1869 that a
different policy was inaugurated. Far different was it with the English
who obtained a footing in China, for from the very first their one aim
was to trade upon the ignorance of the natives, and to make the largest
possible fortunes. British trade with China began later than that of the
other great Western powers, but it rapidly grew to far greater importance
than that of Russia or Portugal, chiefly because it was mainly carried on
by that great and powerful commercial body, the East India Company, on
whom rests the responsibility of the first introduction to the Celestial
Empire of opium, now consumed in such immense quantities and cultivated in
China itself, but which was totally unknown there before the eighteenth
century. For over two centuries the East India Company enjoyed a monopoly
of trade, and in their eagerness for gain its members swallowed many an
affront to their own and their country's dignity, for their relations to
the Chinese Government resembled those of humble suppliants to the "Son of
Heaven."
[Sidenote: THE EAST INDIA COMPANY]
There is something deeply pathetic in the gradual realization by that
"Son of Heaven" that the sons of earth from over the sea were really more
powerful than himself, and that he was the one to be defeated in any real
conflict with them. How touching, for instance, was the edict issued
in 1800, the first year of the century, so fatal to China as a nation,
prohibiting the importation of opium, an edict utterly powerless to check
the evil, which was spreading like a fatal blight throughout the length
and breadth of the doomed land. The traffic went on unchecked, and between
1821 and 1831 the amount landed at the various ports increased from 4628
chests to 23,670. In 1832 the monopoly of the Company came to an end,
and the heads of the factories were succeeded by a representative of the
Sovereign of Great Britain, whom the Chinese authorities hoped to coerce
more easily than they could the many-headed hydra the Company had seemed
to be. "On the one side," says Professor Legge, "was a resistless force
determined to prosecute its enterprise for the enlargement of its trade,
and the conduct of it as with an equal nation; on the other side, was the
old Empire seeming to be unconscious of its weakness, determined not to
acknowledge the claim of equality, and confident of its power to suppress
the import of opium." For a brief space it seemed as if the latter would
gain the day, for England made the fatal mistake of associating with her
first representative, Lord Napier, two men who had been in the hated East
India Company. The policy pursued was weak and vacillating; Lord Napier
was disowned by his Government, and after suffering much indignity at the
hands of the Chinese, died at Macao of a broken heart. He was succeeded
by Sir J. F. Davis, during whose term of office the relations between the
two countries became more and more strained, until in 1839 the Chinese
Government made its last final effort to oust out alike the foreigners and
the abuses they had introduced, which were to it as an ever-present canker
eating into the life of the nation. The able politician, Lin-Tseh-Hsu, was
appointed Governor-General of the Kwang provinces with orders to bring the
foreign devils to reason.
It so happened when the new ruler, who was "a thoroughly orthodox
Chinaman," arrived at Canton, there were British ships in port with some
twenty thousand chests of opium on board. Lin at once ordered these to
be given up for destruction, and as no notice was taken of his demand,
he commanded all the Chinese in the service of the foreigners to leave
them at once. They dared not disobey, and when they were gone a cordon
of troops was posted round the British quarters, and a manifesto was
issued to the effect that unless the opium was surrendered all the
merchants would be slain. Captain Eliot, who was Secretary to Sir J. F.
Davis, seeing no hope of rescue, gave up the opium, which was flung with
quantities of quick-lime, salt and water into deep trenches at Chunhow,
near the mouth of the river, "where it quickly became decomposed, and the
mixture ran into the sea."
This and other high-handed measures of the energetic Governor of Kwang
led to the war which resulted in the ceding of Hong-Kong to the English
and the opening to British trade of Canton, Amoy, Fuchan, Ningpo, and
Shanghai. The spell was in fact finally broken, Chinese isolation was
at an end for ever, and the first chapter was written of the history
of modern China. China is a land doomed to partition amongst the hated
"foreign devils," who are eager to divide the spoil, and are preparing to
intersect the once sacred interior of the flowery land with the relentless
iron roads, before the advance of which all privacy and seclusion
disappear.
[Sidenote: THE PEKIN CONVENTION]
The Treaty of Nanking, signed in 1842, was succeeded after another war,
which began in 1856 and ended in 1858, by the Treaty of Tien-tsin,
making yet further concessions to England; but it was not until after
the Anglo-French Expedition had crossed the Pei-Ho river, and encamped
beneath the very walls of the capital itself, that the Chinese realized
how futile was further resistance. The Convention of Pekin, signed in
1860, ratified the Treaty of Tien-tsin, and formed the foundation of
the present relations between China and Great Britain. The Emperor,
Hsien-Fung, died the next year, and his last hours must indeed have
been embittered by the knowledge that the flood-gates were opened, and
that he could only leave the semblance of power to his successor, an
infant of five years old. Nothing could now check the introduction of
European civilization, which in the eyes of the Chinese was synonymous
with all that was most detrimental to their true interests. Fortunately,
however, the advantages were not really so entirely on the side of the
foreigners as is generally supposed; for the people will in the end, it
is hoped, lead better and nobler lives than before. Missionaries of many
nationalities are doing their best against terrible odds to introduce
the religion of the Redeemer, and even in material matters some good has
resulted to the much-oppressed natives. Numerous steamers have long plied
unmolested to and fro between the chief European ports and Shanghai, and
a system of custom-house control has been established in that important
town of Central China, greatly to the advantage of native trade. The taxes
imposed on foreign goods are now one of the most important sources of the
revenues of the Empire, and the driving away of the "foreign devils" would
mean an incalculable loss to the Chinese themselves. The total value of
the exports from Shanghai alone is more than £22,715,000, of which some
£8,746,000 represents native produce from the immediate neighbourhood
of the port, whilst the imports, including Chinese goods from other
districts, reaches a considerably higher figure.
[Sidenote: HOPE FOR THE FUTURE]
All this means prosperity to the millions, who before the throwing open of
the inland provinces to foreign commerce, lived from hand to mouth, and
were ground down by the ceaseless exactions of the native officials. This
truth is not unfortunately even now really understood by the populace,
for political knowledge filters very slowly from the palace to the
hovels of China; but we may yet hope to see the day when really cordial
relations will be established between the white and yellow races. The
defeat of China by Japan, with the huge indemnity exacted by the latter,
was of course a terrible blow to commerce; but already there are signs of
recovery, for the wealth and numbers of the people of the vast Empire are
really alike inexhaustible.