From Nagasaki, in following our proposed course, we sail for Hong Kong,
through the Yellow and Chinese seas, a distance of eleven hundred miles.
This is very sure to be a rough passage, and the marvel is rather that
more vessels are not lost here than that so many are. Seamen call it
"the graveyard of commerce." As we enter the magnificent harbor of Hong
Kong it is found to be surrounded by a range of lofty hills, which
shelter it completely from the sweeping winds that so often prevail in
this region. It is the most easterly of the possessions of Great
Britain, and is kept in a well-fortified condition, the uniforms of the
garrison being a striking feature of the busy streets of the city at all
hours of the day. The houses in the European section are large and
handsome structures, mostly of stone, rising tier upon tier from the
main street to a height of some hundreds of feet on the face of the hill
immediately back of the town. On and about the lofty Victoria Peak are
many charming bungalows, or cottages, with attractive surroundings,
which enjoy a noble prospect of the harbor and country. The streets
appropriated to the use of the Europeans are spacious and clean, but the
Chinese portion of Hong Kong is quite characteristic of the native
race,--very crowded and very dirty, seeming to invite all sorts of
epidemic diseases, which in fact nearly always prevail more or less
severely among the lower classes.
These streets exhibit strange local pictures. The shoemaker plies his
trade in the open thoroughfare; cooking is going on at all hours in the
gutters beside the roads; itinerant pedlers dispense food made of
mysterious materials; the barber shaves his customer upon the sidewalk;
the universal fan is carried by the men, and not by the women. The
Chinese mariner's compass does not point to the North Pole, but to the
South; that is, the index is placed upon the opposite end of the needle.
When Chinamen meet each other upon the streets, instead of shaking each
other's hands they shake their own. The men wear skirts, and the women
wear pantaloons. The dressmakers are not women, but men. In reading a
book a Chinaman begins at the end and reads backwards. We uncover the
head as a mark of respect; they take off their shoes for the same
purpose, but keep their heads covered. We shave the face; they shave the
head and eyebrows. At dinner we begin the meal with soup and fish; they
reverse the order and begin with the dessert. The old men fly kites
while the boys look on; shuttlecock is their favorite game; it is
played, however, not with the hands, but with the feet. White
constitutes the mourning color, and black is the wedding hue. The women
perform the men's work, and the men wash the clothing. We pay our
physicians for attending us in illness; they pay their doctors to keep
them well, and stop their remuneration when they are ill. In short, this
people seem to be our antipodes in customs as well as being so
geographically.
A visit to the water-front of the city affords much amusement,
especially at the hour when the market boats with vegetables arrive from
the country, and from along shore with fish. Here the people swarm like
ants more than like human beings; all eager for business, all crowding
and talking at the same time, and creating a confusion that would seem
to defeat its own object; namely, to buy and to sell. The vegetables are
various and good, the variety of fruit limited and poor in flavor, but
the fish are abundant and various in size and color. Nine-tenths of the
business on the river-front is done by women, and they are very rarely
seen without an infant strapped to their backs, while they are carrying
heavy burdens in their hands, or are engaged in rowing or sculling their
boats. They trade, make change, and clean the fish quite oblivious of
the infant at their backs. A transient visitor to China is not competent
to speak of the higher class of women, as no access can be had to
domestic life. Only those of the common class appear indiscriminately in
public, Oriental exclusiveness wrapping itself about the sex here nearly
as rigidly as in Egypt. If ladies go abroad at all, it is in curtained
palanquins, borne upon men's shoulders, partially visible through a
transparent veil of gauze. Anywhere east of Italy woman is either a toy
or a slave.
Hong Kong is an island nearly forty miles in circumference, consisting
of a cluster of hills rising almost to the dignity of mountains. The
gray granite of which the island is mostly composed, furnishes an
excellent material for building purposes, and is largely employed for
that object, affording a good opportunity for architectural display. A
trip of a hundred miles up the Pearl River takes us to Canton, strangest
of strange cities. It has a population of a million and a half, and yet
there is not a street of over ten feet in width within the walls, horses
and wheeled vehicles being unknown. The city extends a distance of five
miles along the river, and a hundred thousand people live in boats. At
the corners of the streets, niches in the walls of the houses contain
idols, before which incense is constantly burning day and night. The
most famous temple in the city is that of the Five Hundred Gods,
containing that number of gilded statues of Buddhist sages, apostles,
and deified warriors. In some of these sacred structures composed of
shrines and miniature temples, among other seeming absurdities we see a
number of sacred hogs wallowing in their filth. Disgusting as it appears
to an intelligent Christian, it has its palliating features. The Parsee
worships fire, the Japanese bows before snakes and foxes, the Hindoo
deifies cows and monkeys; why, then, should not the Chinese have their
swine as objects of veneration? We may destroy the idols, but let us not
be too hard upon the idolaters; they do as well as they know. The idol
is the measure of the worshipper. The punishment of crime is swift and
sure, the number of persons beheaded annually being almost incredible.
Friday is the day for clearing the crowded prison at Canton, and it is
not uncommon on that occasion to see a dozen criminals beheaded in the
prison yard in eight minutes, one sweeping blow of the executioner's
sword decapitating each human body as it stands erect and blindfolded.
One is jostled in the narrow ways by staggering coolies with buckets of
the vilest contents, and importuned for money by beggars who thrust
their deformed limbs in his face. It is but natural to fear contagion of
some sort from contact with such creatures, and yet the crowd is so
dense that it is impossible to entirely avoid them. Under foot the
streets are wet, muddy, and slippery. Why some deadly disease does not
break out and sweep away the people is a mystery.
Philanthropic societies are numerous in the cities of China. Indeed,
they are hardly excelled by those of America or Europe. They embrace
well-organized orphan asylums, institutions for the relief of indigent
widows with families, homes for the aged and infirm, public hospitals,
and free schools in every district. As is the case with ourselves, some
of these are purely governmental charities, while others are supported
by liberal endowments left by deceased citizens. There are depots
established to dispense medicines among the poor, and others whence
clothing is distributed free of cost. It must be remembered that these
societies and organizations are not copied from Western models. They
have existed here from time immemorial.
No one has ever been able to trace any affinity between the Chinese
language and that of any other people, ancient or modern. It is
absolutely unique. No other nation except the Japanese has ever borrowed
from it, or mingled any of its elements with its own. It must have
originated from the untutored efforts of a primitive people. Like the
Egyptian tongue, it was at first probably composed of hieroglyphics,
expressing ideas by pictured objects, which in the course of time became
systematized into letters or signs expressive of sounds and words.
[Illustration: A CHINESE CART.]
Though we may dislike the Chinese, it is not wise to shut our eyes to
facts which have passed into history. They have long been a reading and
a cultured people. Five hundred years before the art of printing was
known to Europe, books were multiplied by movable types in China. Every
province has its separate history in print, and reliable maps of each
section of the country are extant. The civil code of laws is annually
corrected and published, a certain degree of education is universal, and
eight-tenths of the people can read and write. The estimate in which
letters are held is shown by the fact that learning forms the very
threshold that leads to fame, honor, and official position. The means of
internal communication between one part of China and another are
scarcely superior to those of Africa. By and by, however, railways will
revolutionize this. Gold and silver are found in nearly every province
of the Empire, while the central districts contain the largest
coal-fields upon the globe. Nearly one-fourth of the human race is
supposed to be comprised within the Chinese Empire. They look to the
past, not to the future, and the word "progress" has apparently to them
no real significance.
In travelling through portions of the country a depressing sense of
monotony is the prevailing feeling one experiences, each section is so
precisely like another. There is no local individuality. Their veritable
records represent this people as far back as the days of Abraham, and,
indeed, they antedate that period. In two important discoveries they
long preceded Europe; namely, that of the magnetic compass and the use
of gunpowder. The knowledge of these was long in travelling westward
through the channels of Oriental commerce, by the way of Asia Minor.
There are many antagonistic elements to consider in judging of the
Chinese. The common people we meet in the ordinary walks of life are far
from prepossessing, and are much the same as those who have emigrated to
this country. One looks in vain among the smooth chins, shaved heads,
and almond eyes of the crowd for signs of intelligence and manliness.
There are no tokens of humor or cheerfulness to be seen, but in their
place there is plenty of apparent cunning, slyness, and deceit, if there
is any truth in physiognomy. With the Japanese the traveller feels
himself constantly sympathizing. He goes among them freely, he enters
their houses and drinks tea with them; but not so with the Chinese. In
place of affiliation we realize a constant sense of repulsion.
We embark at Hong Kong for Singapore by the way of the China Sea and the
Gulf of Siam. The northerly wind favors us, causing the ship to rush
through the turbulent waters like a race-horse. The Philippine Islands
are passed, and leaving Borneo on our port-bow as we draw near to the
Equatorial Line, the ship is steered due west for the mouth of the
Malacca Straits. Off the Gulf of Siam we are pretty sure to get a view
of a water-spout, and it is to be hoped that it may be a goodly distance
from us. Atmospheric and ocean currents meet here, from the China Sea
northward, from the Malacca Straits south and west, and from the Pacific
Ocean eastward, mingling off the Gulf of Siam, and causing, very
naturally, a confusion of the elements, resulting sometimes in producing
these wind and water phenomena. A water-spout is a miniature cyclone, an
eddy of the wind rotating with such velocity as to suck up a column of
water from the sea to the height of one or two hundred feet. This column
of water appears to be largest at the top and bottom, and contracted in
the middle. If it were to fall foul of a ship and break, it would surely
wreck and submerge her. Modern science shows that all storms are
cyclonic; that is, they are circular eddies of wind of greater or less
diameter. The power of these cyclones is more apparent upon the sea than
upon the land, where the obstruction is naturally greater. Yet we know
how destructive they sometimes prove in our Western States.
Singapore is the chief port of the Malacca Straits, and is an island
lying just off the southern point of Asia, thirty miles long and half as
wide, containing a population of about a hundred thousand. Here, upon
landing, we are surrounded by tropical luxuriance, the palm and cocoanut
trees looming above our heads and shading whole groves of bananas. The
most precious spices, the richest fruits, the gaudiest feathered birds
are found in their native atmosphere. There are plenty of Chinese at
Singapore. They dominate the Strait settlements, monopolizing all
branches of small trade, while the natives are lazy and listless, true
children of the equatorial regions. Is it because Nature is here so
bountiful, so lovely, so prolific, that her children are sluggish,
dirty, and heedless? It would seem to require a less propitious climate,
a sterile soil, and rude surroundings to awaken human energy and to
place man at his best. The common people are seen almost naked, and
those who wear clothes at all, affect the brightest colors. The jungle
is dense, tigers abound, and men, women, and children are almost daily
killed and eaten by them.
It is easy to divine the merchantable products of the island from the
nature of the articles which are seen piled up for shipment upon the
wharves, consisting of tapioca, cocoanut oil, gambia, tin ore, indigo,
tiger-skins, coral, gutta-percha, hides, gums, and camphor.
There is no winter or autumn here, no sere and yellow leaf period, but
seemingly a perpetual spring, with a temperature almost unvarying; new
leaves always swelling from the bud, flowers always in bloom, the sun
rising and setting within five minutes of six o'clock during the entire
year. Singapore enjoys a soft breeze most of the day from across the Bay
of Bengal, laden with fragrant sweetness from the spice-fields of
Ceylon.
Each place we visit has its peculiar local pictures. Here, small
hump-backed oxen are seen driven about at a lively trot in place of
horses. Pedlers roam the streets selling drinking-water, with soup,
fruit, and a jelly made from sugar and sea-weed, called agar-agar.
Native houses are built upon stilts to keep out the snakes and tigers.
The better class of people wear scarlet turbans and white cotton skirts;
others have parti-colored shawls round their heads, while yellow scarfs
confine a cotton wrap about the waist. Diminutive horses drag heavy
loads, though themselves scarcely bigger than large dogs. Itinerant
cooks, wearing a wooden yoke about their necks, with a cooking apparatus
on one end, and a little table to balance it on the other, serve meals
of fish and rice upon the streets to laborers and boatmen, for a couple
of pennies each. Money has here, as in most Eastern countries, a larger
purchasing power than it has with us in the West. The variety of fruit
is greater than in China or Japan, and there are one or two species,
such as the delicious mangosteen, which are found indigenous in no other
region.
The stranger, upon landing at Singapore, is hardly prepared to find such
excellent modern institutions as exist here. Among them are an
attractive museum, a public library, a Protestant cathedral, a hospital,
public schools, and a fine botanical garden. The island belongs to the
English government, having been purchased by it so long ago as 1819,
from the Sultan of Johore,--wise forethought, showing its importance as
a port of call between England and India.
A two days' sail through waters which seem at night like a sea of
phosphorescence, every ripple producing flashes of light, will take us
to the island of Penang, the most northerly port of the Straits. It
resembles Singapore in its people, vegetation, and climate, enjoying one
long, unvarying summer. While the birds and butterflies are in perfect
harmony with the loveliness of nature, while the flowers are glorious in
beauty and in fragrance, man alone seems out of place in this region.
Indolent, dirty, unclad, he does nothing to improve such wealth of
possibilities as nature spreads broadcast only in equatorial islands. He
does little for himself, nothing for others, while the sensuous life he
leads poisons his nature, so that virtue and vice have no relative
meaning for him. We speak now of the masses, the common people. Noble
exceptions always exist. In size Penang is a little smaller than
Singapore. Its wooded hills of vivid greenness rise above the town and
surrounding sea in graceful undulations, growing more and more lofty as
they recede inland, until they culminate in three mountain peaks. Penang
is separated from the mainland by a narrow belt of sea not more than
three miles wide, giving it a position of great commercial importance.
The areca-palm, known as the Penang-tree, is the source of the
betel-nut, which is chewed by the natives as a stimulant; and as it
abounds on the island, it has given it the name it bears. The town
covers about a square mile, through which runs one broad, main street,
intersected by lesser thoroughfares at right angles. A drive about the
place gives us an idea that it is a thrifty town, but not nearly so
populous as Singapore. It is also observable that the Chinese element
predominates here. The main street is lined by shops kept by them. The
front of the dwellings being open, gives the passer-by a full view of
all that may be going on inside the household. Shrines are nearly always
seen in some nook or corner, before which incense is burning, this
shrine-room evidently being also the sleeping, eating, and living room.
The islands of Penang and Singapore are free from malarial fevers, and
probably no places on earth are better adapted to the wants of primitive
man, for they produce spontaneously sufficient nutritious food to
support life independent of personal exertion. The home of the Malay is
not so clean as that of the ant or the birds; even the burrowing animals
are neater. The native women are graceful and almost pretty, slight in
figure, and passionately fond of ornaments, covering their arms and
ankles with metallic rings, and thrusting silver and brass rings through
their ears, noses, and lips.
The cocoanut-tree is always in bearing on the islands of the Straits,
and requires no cultivation. Of the many liberal gifts bestowed upon the
tropics, this tree is perhaps the most valuable. The Asiatic poet
celebrates in verse the hundred uses to which the trunk, the branches,
the leaves, the fruit, and the sap are applied. In Penang a certain
number of these trees are not permitted to bear fruit. The embryo bud
from which the blossoms and nuts would spring is tied up to prevent its
expansion; a small incision then being made at the end, there oozes in
gentle drops a pleasant liquor called toddy, which is the palm wine of
the poet. This, when it is first drawn, is cooling and wholesome, but
when it is fermented it produces a strong, intoxicating spirit. The
banana is equally prolific and abundant, and forms a very large portion
of the food of the common people. In the immediate neighborhood of the
town are some plantations conducted by Europeans who live in neat
cottages, with enclosures of cultivated flowers, and orchards of
fruit-trees. Still further inland are large gardens of bread-fruit,
nutmegs, cinnamon, pepper, and other spices. There are also large fields
of sugar-cane, tobacco, and coffee. The delicate little sensitive plant
here grows wild, and is equally tremulous and subsiding at the touch of
human hands, as it is with us. Lilies are seen in wonderful variety, the
stems covered with butterflies nearly as large as humming-birds.
Penang originally belonged to the Malay kingdom, but about the year 1786
it was given to an English sea-captain as a marriage-portion with the
King of Keddah's daughter, and by him, in course of time, it was
transferred to the East India Company. When Captain Francis Light
received it with his dusky bride, it was the wild, uncultivated home of
a few hundred fishermen. To-day it has a population of nearly a hundred
thousand.