The Steamer from Shanghai to Hong Kong put in at Amoy to bring the
cargo of a disabled bark to Hong Kong. This gave some of my family who
had been making a visit to Shanghai an opportunity to see Amoy. It is
situated on a barren, hilly island; its streets are as narrow as lanes.
Going through them in chairs, you come out upon a hilly district, with
few trees, covered with remarkable rocks, many of them bowlders, not
settled so far in the ground as most rocks, but lifted from it, some
of them on their smallest ends, and some leaning towards each other,
making natural rooms, with mossy floors, and an opening at the top.
Some of them are used as temples on a small scale; idols, discolored
by age and damp, are perched in them. Some real temples are built of
the largest bowlders. In one of them, as one of the party was sitting
on the stool in front of the idol, looking at the hideous images with
which the temple was filled, expressing her wonder that human beings
prayed to such things, one of the missionaries present asked an old
priest if they really did believe in them. He said he could not tell
whether the people did believe in them or not. The images might, or
they might not, be gods; but “it was the custom to worship them; and,
after all, whether they heard or not, it amounted to about the same
thing as the worship by christians of their God.”
The foreigners, merchants, missionaries, and others, do not, as a
general thing, live in the city, but on a small island across the
harbor, rocky, like the larger island where the city is built, but
not quite so dreary and barren. Attempts have been made to fertilize
it, not wholly without success. Many of the houses are attractive,
commanding a good sea-view.
From a great cave called the “Tiger’s Mouth,” formed by two rocks
projecting from the side of a hill, a flat one forming the lower jaw,
or the floor of the cave, and the upper stone curving over it, making
a good resemblance to an animal’s mouth, you look down upon a wild,
barren tract of country, where the rocks, my informant said, reminded
her of almonds stuck into the top of a Christmas pudding, or as if
giants had been having a battle, and their missiles had been left on
the field in the reckless position where they fell. One rock, about
eighty tons in weight, was balanced on another larger rock so evenly
that one man, putting forth all his strength, could make it tilt
slightly. They say that a typhoon makes it rock perceptibly. Just below
it is a small Chinese cottage. The woman who occupied it was asked
if she was not afraid to live there, for if the bowlder should tilt
a little too much, one end of it would go through her roof. But
she said, “No, it is good ‘Fung Shuy,’ and will bring good luck to my
dwelling,”
[Illustration:
FUNG SHUY. Page 237.
]