This is a traveller, sir; knows men and
Manners, and has ploughed up the sea so far
Till both the poles have knocked; has seen the sun
Take coach, and can distinguish the color
Of his horses and their kind.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER’S “_Scornful Lady_.”
The city of Canton is only eight hours by steamer from Hong Kong.
Arriving in the Canton river you find yourself in a floating population
in boats, close together, as though ground rents were as dear as in
Broadway. When you enter a boat for a passage up the river you marvel
that the boat can extricate itself from the snarl; but you are in a
few moments on your way, meeting a seemingly endless throng of people,
among whom you involuntarily close your eyes as if in anticipation
of a crash. We were the guests of the Rev. Dr. Happer of the American
Presbyterian Mission, who on our arrival at Hong Kong had kindly sent
and invited us. We were also entertained by the other members of the
Mission, Messrs. Noyes, Marcellus, and McChesney. We visited Dr. Ker’s
Hospital. Over a hundred Chinese were sitting in a commodious room
listening to a native evangelist, and going out by tens to receive
medical treatment. This hospital was formerly sustained by the American
Board of Foreign Missions, with Dr. Peter Parker for surgeon and
physician.
Being introduced to Archdeacon Gray, he very kindly went with us two
afternoons among the temples and many remarkable places. We saw the
temple in which are five hundred bronzed images of gods or deified
men, each in a posture or holding an emblem representing some action
or attribute. We saw the water-clock made by tubs of water placed one
above another, each dripping into the one below it, and the lowest
holding a graduated stick which rose through a hole in the lid, and as
each hour-mark on the stick appears through the hole, a man goes up to
the roof with a painted sign announcing to the people the time of day.
This seems to be an heirloom from past ages when the “Clepsydra” was
in use, of which this is a specimen. Adherence to this useless thing
is one illustration of the Chinese attachment to antiquity. As you
go about the city, you see things which carry you back two thousand
years, oxen treading clay, men sifting wheat in sieves fastened on
the ends of planks laid on rolling stones, and a man standing on each
and keeping up a motion on the planks like “tilting,” or “seesaw,”
a laborious process of doing a simple thing. Then you see works of
art surpassing modern western skill; as, for example, an elephant’s
tusk undergoing three years of carving; price, one hundred and fifty
dollars. Then you visit an eating-house, which Archdeacon Gray begs
you to endure, to know that some things related of the Chinese are
not fictions. He goes to a man who is eating, and courteously taking
up his plate, says, “What is this?” The man laughs and says, “Rat.”
He goes to another, and, taking his plate, says, “What is this?” The
man cheerfully replies, “Black cat.” Another man says, “Dog.” Around
the room, on hooks, are evident signs that the men were truthful. You
make swift retreat, but are constrained by your guide to look into an
opium shop, where the customer, as he comes in, mounts a table, lies at
full length, with his head on a wicker pillow hollowed in the middle
to fit the neck, then is furnished with a pipe and lamp and box of
opium, which he smokes till he is stupefied. Emerging from such scenes
of degradation into the narrow street, ten feet wide, you may see a
woman at a door with a child three years old, with whom she is playing
“pease porridge hot,” going through the motions as we learned them in
childhood; and you wonder whether Mother Goose derived her knowledge
from the disciples of Confucius, or whether she did actually live and
die, as is now asserted, in Rowe Street, Boston. This Chinese woman and
her child playing at “pease porridge hot,” is one of those touches of
nature which make “all the world akin.” You next reach a place where
intellectual competition throws some of our university feats into the
shade.
[Illustration:
OPIUM SMOKERS. Page 200.
]