A Cochin China River--The Ambition of Saigon--A French Colonial
Metropolis--European Life in Saigon-A Cochin-Chinese
Village--"Afternoon Tea" in Choquan--Anamese Children--Anamite
Costume--Anamite River-Dwellings--An Amphibious Population--An
Unsuccessful Colony--"With the Big Toe"--Three Persecuting
Kings--Saigon
S.S. "SINDH," CHINA SEA, January.
This steamer, one of the finest of the Messageries Maritimes line, is
perfect in all respects, and has a deck like that of an old-fashioned
frigate. The weather has been perfect also, and the sea smooth enough
for a skiff. The heat increases hourly though, or rather has increased
hourly, for hotter it cannot be! Punkahs are going continually at meal
times, and if one sits down to write in the saloon, the "punkah-wallah"
spies one out and begins his refreshing labors at once. But we took on
board a host of mosquitoes at Saigon, and the nights are consequently
so intolerable that I weary for the day.
The twenty-four hours spent at Saigon broke the monotonous pleasantness
of our voyage very agreeably to me, but most of the passengers complain
of the wearisome detention in the heat. In truth, the mercury stood at
92 degrees!
At daybreak yesterday we were steaming up a branch of the great Me-kong
river in Cochin China, a muddy stream, densely fringed by the nipah
palm, whose dark green fronds, ten and twelve feet long, look as if
they grew out of the ground, so dumpy is its stem. The country, as
overlooked from our lofty deck, appeared a dead level of rice and
scrubby jungle intermixed, a vast alluvial plain, from which the heavy,
fever-breeding mists were rising in rosy folds. Every now and then we
passed a Cochin Chinese village--a collection of very draughty-looking
wooden huts, roofed with palm leaves, built over the river on gridiron
platforms supported on piles. Each dwelling of the cluster had its boat
tethered below it. It looked a queer amphibious life. Men were lying on
the gridirons smoking, women were preparing what might be the
breakfast, and babies were crawling over the open floors, born with the
instinct not to tumble over the edge into the river below. These
natives were small and dark, although of the Mongolian type, with wide
mouths and high cheek bones--an ugly race; and their attitudes, their
tumble-to-pieces houses, and their general forlornness, gave me the
impression that they are an indolent race as well, to be ousted in time
possibly by the vigorous and industrious Chinaman.
After proceeding for about forty miles up this mighty Me-kong or
Cambodia river, wearying somewhat of its nipah-fringed alluvial flats,
and of the monotonous domestic economy of which we had so good a view,
we reached Saigon, which has the wild ambition to propose to itself to
be a second Singapore! All my attempts to learn anything about Saigon
on board have utterly failed. People think that they told me something
altogether new and sufficient when they said that it is a port of call
for the French mail steamers, and one of the hottest places in the
world! This much I knew before I asked them! If they know anything more
now, no dexterity of mine can elicit it. There was a general stampede
ashore as soon as we moored, and gharries--covered spring carts--drawn
by active little Sumatra ponies, and driven by natives of Southern
India, known as Klings, were immediately requisitioned, but nothing
came of it apparently, and when I came back at sunset I found that,
after an hour or two of apparently purposeless wanderings, all my
fellow-passengers had returned to the ship, pale and depressed. True,
the mercury was above 90 degrees!
Arriving in this condition of most unblissful ignorance, I was
astonished when a turn in the river brought us close upon a
considerable town, straggling over a great extent of ground,
interspersed with abundant tropical greenery, its river front
consisting of a long, low line of much-shaded cafes, mercantile
offices, some of them flying consular flags and Government offices,
behind which lies the city with its streets, shops, and great covered
markets or bazaars, and its barracks, churches, and convents.
The Me-kong, though tortuous and ofttimes narrow, is navigable as the
Donnai or Saigon branch up to and above Saigon for vessels of the
largest tonnage, and the great Sindh steamed up to a wharf and moored
alongside it, almost under the shade of great trees. A French
three-decker of the old type, moored higher up, serves as an hospital.
There were two French ironclads, a few steamers, and some big sailing
ships at anchor, but nothing looked busy, and the people on the wharf
were all loafers.
After all my fellow-passengers had driven off I stepped ashore and
tried to realize that I was in Cochin China or Cambodia, but it would
not do. The irrepressible Chinaman in his loose cotton trousers was as
much at home as in Canton, and was doing all the work that was done;
the shady lounges in front of the cafes were full of Frenchmen,
Spaniards, and Germans, smoking and dozing with their feet upon tables
or on aught else which raised them to the level of their heads; while
men in linen suits and pith helmets dashed about in buggies and
gharries, and French officers and soldiers lounged weariedly along all
the roads. There was not a native to be seen! A little later there was
not a European to be seen! There was a universal siesta behind closed
jalousies, and Saigon was abandoned to Chinamen and leggy dogs. Then
came the cool of the afternoon, i.e., the mercury, with evident
reluctance, dawdled down to 84 degrees; military bands performed, the
Europeans emerged, smoking as in the morning, to play billiards or
ecarte, or sip absinthe at their cafes; then came the mosquitoes and
dinner, after which I was told that card-parties were made up, and that
the residents played till near midnight. Thus from observation and
hearsay, I gathered that the life of a European Saigonese was made up
of business in baju and pyjamas with cheroot in mouth from 6 to 9:30
A.M., then the bath, the toilette, and the breakfast of claret and
curry; next the sleeping, smoking, and lounging till tiffin; after
tiffin a little more work, then the band, billiards, ecarte, absinthe,
smoking, dinner, and card-parties, varied by official entertainments.
Rejecting a guide, I walked about Saigon, saw its streets, cafes, fruit
markets, bazaars, barracks, a botanic or acclimatization garden, of
which tigers were the chief feature, got out upon the wide, level
roads, bordered with large trees, which run out into the country for
miles in perfectly straight lines, saw the handsome bungalows of the
residents, who surround themselves with many of the luxuries of Paris,
went over a beautiful convent, where the sisters who educate native
girl children received me with kindly courtesy; and eventually driving
in a gharrie far beyond the town, and then dismissing it, I got into a
labyrinth of lanes, each with a high hedge of cactus, and without
knowing it found that I was in a native village, Choquan, a village in
which every house seems to be surrounded and hidden by high walls of a
most malevolent and obnoxious cactus, so as to insure absolute privacy
to its proprietor. Each dwelling is under the shade of pommeloe,
orange, and bamboo. By dint of much peeping, and many pricks which have
since inflamed, I saw that the poorer houses were built of unplaned
planks or split bamboo, thatched with palm leaves, with deep verandas,
furnished with broad matted benches with curious, round bamboo pillows.
On these men, scarcely to be called clothed, were lying, smoking or
chewing the betel-nut, and all had teapots in covered baskets within
convenient reach. The better houses are built of an ornamental
framework of carved wood, the floor of which is raised about three feet
from the ground on brick pillars. The roofs of these are rather steep,
and are mostly tiled, and have deep eaves, but do not as elsewhere form
the cover of the veranda. While I was looking through the cactus
screen of one of these houses, a man came out with a number of low
caste, leggy, flop-eared, mangy dogs, who attacked me in a cowardly
bullying fashion, yelping, barking, and making surreptitious snaps at
my feet. Their owner called them off, however, and pelted them so
successfully that some ran away whimpering, and two pretended (as dogs
will) to have broken legs. This man carried a cocoa-nut, and on my
indicating that I was thirsty, he hesitated, and then turning back,
signed to me to follow him into his house. This was rare luck!
Within the cactus screen, which is fully ten feet high, there is a
graveled area, on which the neat-looking house stands, and growing out
of the very thirsty ground are cocoa palms, bananas, bread fruit, and
papayas. There are verandas on each side of the doorway with stone
benches; the doorway and window frames are hung with "portieres" of
split reeds, and a ladder does duty for door steps. The interior is
very dark, and divided into several apartments. As soon as I entered
there was a rush as if of bats into the darkness, but on being
reassured, about twenty women and boy and girl children appeared, and
contemplated me with an apathetic stare of extreme solemnity. Remember
the mercury was 92 degrees, so the women may be excused for having
nothing more than petticoats or loose trousers on in the privacy of
their home, the children for being in a state of nudity, and the man
for being clothed in a loin cloth! As I grew used to the darkness I saw
a toothless old woman smoking in a corner, fanned by two girls, who, I
believe, are domestic slaves. Near one of the window openings a young
woman was lounging, and two others were attentively removing vermin
from her luxuriant but ill-kept hair. Mats and bamboo pillows covered
the floors, and most of the inmates had been rudely disturbed in a
siesta.
I was evidently in the principal apartment, for the walls were
decorated with Chinese marine pictures, among which were two glaring
daubs of a Madonna and an Ecce Homo. There was also a rude crucifix,
from which I gather that this is a Roman Catholic family. There were
two teapots of tea on a chair, a big tub of pommeloes on the floor, and
a glazed red earthenware bowl full of ripe bananas on another chair. A
sort of sickle, a gun, and some bullock gear hung against the wall. In
the middle of the room there was a sort of trap in the floor, and there
was the same in two other apartments. Through this all rubbish is
conveniently dropped. A woman brought in a cocoa-nut, and poured the
milk into a gourd calabash, and the man handed me the dish of bananas,
so I had an epicurean repast, and realized that I was in Cochin China!
They were courteous people, and not only refused the quarter dollar
which I pressed upon them, but gave me a handkerchief full of bananas
when I left them, being pleased, however, to accept a puggree.
The neat gravel area, the covered walls, and neatly tiled roof, the
lattice work, the boards suspended from the door-posts, with (as I
have since learned) texts from the Chinese Classics in gold upon them,
and the large establishment, show that the family belongs to the upper
class of Anamites, and leave one quite unprepared for the reeking,
festering heap of garbage below the house, the foul, fetid air, and
swarming vermin of the interior, and the unwashedness of the inmates. I
bowed myself out, the gate was barred behind me, and in two minutes I
had lost what I supposed to be my way, and having left the maze of
cactus-walled paths behind, was entangled in a maze of narrow village
paths through palms and bananas, flowering trees covered with creepers
and orchids, and a wonderful profusion of small and great ferns.
Getting back into the cactus hidden village I found groups of pretty,
dark-skinned children, quite naked, playing in the deep dust, while
some no bigger were lounging in the shade smoking cigars, lazily
watching the clouds of smoke which they puffed out from their chubby
cheeks.
Finding my own footsteps in the deep dust, I got back to a pathway with
a monstrous bamboo hedge on one side, and a rice-field on the other, in
which was a slimy looking pond with a margin of pink water-lilies, in
which a number of pink buffaloes of large size were wallowing with much
noise and rough play, plastering their sensitive hides with mud as a
protection against mosquitoes.
With some difficulty, by some very queer paths and with much
zigzagging, I at last reached Cholen,* a native town, said to be three
or eight miles from Saigon, and was so exhausted by the fatigue of the
long walk in such a ferocious temperature that I sat by the roadside on
a stump under a huge tropical tree, considering the ways of ants and
Anamites. Children with brown chubby faces which had never been washed
since birth, and, according to all accounts, will never be washed till
death, stood in a row, staring the stare of apathy, with a quiet
confidence. They had no clothes on, and I admired their well-made forms
and freedom from skin disease. The Mongolian face is pleasant in
childhood. A horde of pariah dogs in the mad excitement of a free
fight, passed, covering me with dust. (By the way, I am told that
hydrophobia is unknown in Cochin China.) Then some French artillerymen,
who politely raised their caps; then a quantity of market girls,
dressed like the same class in China, but instead of being bare-headed,
they wore basket hats, made of dried leaves, fully twenty-four inches
in diameter, by six in depth. These girls walked well, and looked
happy. Then a train of Anamese carts passed, empty, the solid wooden
wheels creaking frightfully round the ungreased axles, each cart being
drawn by two buffaloes, each pair being attached to the cart in front
by a rope through the nostrils, so that one driver sufficed for eleven
carts. The native men could not be said to be clothed, but, as I
remarked before, the mercury was above 90 degrees. They were, however,
protected both against sun and rain by hats over three feet in
diameter, very conical, peaked at the top, coming down umbrella fashion
over the shoulders, and well tilted back.
[*Cholen, i.e., the big market, has a population which is variously
estimated at from 30,000 to 80,000. I am inclined to think that the
lowest estimate is nearest the mark.--I. L. B.]
After laboriously reaching Cholen, I found far the greater part of the
town to be Chinese, rather than Anamese, with Chinese streets, temples,
gaming houses, club houses, and that general air of business and
industry which seems characteristic of the Chinese everywhere; but
still groping my way about, I came upon what I most wished to see--the
real Anamese town. There is a river, the Me-kong, or one of its
branches, and the town--the real native Cholen--consists of a very
large collection of river-dwellings, little, if at all, superior to
those which we passed in coming up. I spent an hour among them, and I
never saw any house whose area could be more than twelve feet square,
while many were certainly not more than seven feet by six. Such
primitive, ramshackle, shaky-looking dwellings I never before have
seen. As compared with them, an Aino hut, even of the poorest kind, is
a model of solidity and architectural beauty. They looked as if a
single gust would topple them and their human contents into the water.
Yet, if it were better carried out, it is not a bad idea to avoid
paying any Anamese form of rent, to secure perfect drainage, a
never-failing water supply, good fishing, immunity from reptiles, and
the easiest of all highways at the very door.
These small rooms with thatched roofs and gridiron floors, raised on
posts six or eight feet above the stream, are reached from the shore by
a path a foot wide, consisting of planks tied on to posts. The
river-dwellings, I must add, are tied together with palm fibre rope.
One of average size can be put together for eleven shillings. In front
of each house a log canoe is moored, into which it is easy to drop from
above when the owner desires any change of attitude or scene.
I ventured into two of these strange abodes, but it was dizzy work to
walk the plank, and as difficult to walk the gridiron floor in shoes.
Both were wretched habitations, but doubtless they suit their inmates,
who need nothing more than a shelter from the sun and rain. The men
wore only loin cloths. The women were clothed to the throat in loose
cotton garments; the children wore nothing. In both the men were
fishing for their supper over the edge of their platforms. In one a
woman was cooking rice; and in both there was a good store of rice,
bananas, and sweet potatoes. There was no furniture in either, except
matted platforms for sleeping upon, a few coarse pipkins, a red
earthen-ware pitcher or two, and some calabashes. On the wall of one
was a crucifix, and on a rafter in the other a wooden carving of a
jolly-looking man, mallet in hand, seated on rice bags, intended for
Daikoku, the Japanese God of Wealth. The people were quite unwashed,
but the draught of the river carried off the bad smells which ought to
have been there, and, fortunately, a gridiron floor is unfavorable to
accumulations of dirt and refuse. These natives look apathetic, and
are, according to our notions, lazy; but I am weary of seeing the
fevered pursuit of wealth, and am inclined to be lenient to these
narcotized existences, provided, as is the case, that they keep clear
of debt, theft, and charity.
Below this amphibious town there is a larger and apparently permanent
floating village, consisting of hundreds of boats moored to the shore
and to each other, poor and forlorn as compared with the Canton house
boats, but yet more crowded, a single thatched roof sheltering one or
more families, without any attempt at furniture or arrangement. The
children swarmed, and looked healthy, and remarkably free from eye and
skin diseases. There were Romish pictures in some of these boats, and
two or three of them exhibited the cross in a not inconspicuous place.
In my solitary explorations I was not mobbed or rudely treated in any
way. The people were as gentle and inoffensive in their manners as the
Japanese, without their elaborate courtesy and civilized curiosity.
Having seen all I could see, I turned shipwards, weary, footsore, and
exhausted; my feet so sore and blistered, indeed, that long before I
reached a gharrie I was obliged to take off my boots and wrap them in
handkerchiefs. The dust was deep and made heavy walking, and the level
straightness of a great part of the road is wearisome. Overtaking even
at my slow rate of progress a string of creaking buffalo carts, I got
upon the hindmost, but after a little rest found the noise, dust, and
slow progress intolerable, and plodded on as before, taking two and a
half hours to walk three miles. About a mile from Cholen there is an
extraordinary burial-ground, said to cover an area of twenty square
miles. (?) It is thickly peopled with the dead, and profuse vegetation
and funereal lichens give it a profoundly melancholy look. It was
chosen by the Cambodian kings several centuries ago for a cemetery, on
the advice of the astrologers of the court. The telegraph wire runs
near it, and so the old and the new age meet.
On my weary way I was overtaken by a young French artillery officer,
who walked with me until we came upon an empty gharrie, and was
eloquent upon the miseries of Saigon. It is a very important military
station, and a sort of depot for the convicts who are sent to the
(comparatively) adjacent settlement of New Caledonia. A large force of
infantry and artillery is always in barracks here, but it is a most
sickly station. At times 40 per cent. of this force is in hospital from
climatic diseases, and the number of men invalided home by every mail
steamer, and the frequent changes necessary, make Saigon a very costly
post. The French don't appear to be successful colonists. This Cochin
Chinese colony of theirs, which consists of the six ancient southern
provinces of the empire of Anam, was ceded to France in 1874, but its
European population is still under twelve thousand, exclusive of the
garrison and the Government officials. The Government consists of a
governor, aided by a privy council. The population of the colony is
under a million and a half, including eighty-two thousand Cambodians
and forty thousand Chinese. According to my various informants--this
young French officer, a French nun, and a trader of dubious
nationality, in whose shop I rested--France is doing its best to
promote the prosperity and secure the good-will of the natives. The
land-tax, which was very oppressive under the native princes, has been
lowered, municipal government has been secured to the native towns, and
corporate and personal rights have been respected. These persons
believe that the colony, far from being a source of profit to France,
is kept up at a heavy annual loss, and they regard the Chinese as the
only element in the population worth having. They think the Anamese
very superior to the Cambodians, from whom indeed they conquered these
six provinces, but the Cambodians are a bigger and finer race
physically.
I do not think I have said how hideous I think the adult Anamese.
Somewhere I have read that two thousand years before our era the
Chinese called them Giao-chi, which signifies "with the big toe." This
led me to look particularly at their bare feet, and I noticed even in
children such a wide separation of the big toe from the rest as to
convey the perhaps erroneous impression that it is of unusual size. The
men are singularly wide at the hips, and walk with a laughably
swaggering gait, which is certainly not affectation, but is produced by
a sufficient anatomical cause. I never saw such ugly, thick-set, rigid
bodies, such uniformly short necks, such sloping shoulders, such flat
faces and flatter noses, such wide, heavy, thick-lipped mouths, such
projecting cheek bones, such low foreheads, such flat-topped heads, and
such tight, thick skin, which suggests the word hide-bound. The dark,
tawny complexion has no richness of tint. Both men and women are short,
and the teeth of both sexes are blackened by the constant chewing of
the betel-nut, which reddens the saliva, which is constantly flowing
like blood from the corners of their mouths. Though not a vigorous,
they appear to be a healthy people, and have very large families. They
suffer chiefly from "forest fever" in the forest lands, but the rice
swamps, deadly to Europeans, do not harm them.
I rested for some time at a very beautiful convent, and was most kindly
entertained by some very calm, sweet-looking sisters, who labor piously
among the female Anamese, and have schools for girls. The troops are
stationed at Saigon for only two years, owing to the unhealthiness of
the climate, but these pious women have no sanitarium, and live and die
at their posts. Various things in the convent chapel remind one of the
faithfulness unto death both of missionaries and converts. In this
century alone three successive kings rivaled each other in persecuting
the Christians, both Europeans and native, over and over again
murdering all the missionaries. In 1841 the king ordered that all
missionaries should be drowned, and in 1851 his successor ordered that
whoever concealed a missionary should be cut in two. The terrible and
sanguinary persecution which followed this edict never ceased, till
years afterward the French frightened the king into toleration, and put
an end, one hopes forever, to the persecution of Christians. The
sisters compute the native Christians at seven thousand, and have
sanguine hopes for the future of Christianity in French Cochin China,
as well as in Cambodia, which appears to be under a French
protectorate.
I do not envy the French their colony. According to my three
informants, Europeans cannot be acclimatized, and most of the children
born of white parents die shortly after birth. The shores of the sea
and of the rivers are scourged by severe intermittent fevers, and the
whole of the colony by dysentery, which among Europeans is particularly
fatal. The mean temperature is 83 degrees F., the dampness is unusual,
and the nights are too hot to refresh people after the heat of the
day.*
[*The chief production of the country is rice, which forms half the sum
total of the exports. The other exports are chiefly salt-fish, salt,
undyed cotton, skins of beasts, and pepper. About seven hundred vessels
enter and leave Saigon in a year.]
After leaving the convent I resumed my gharrie, and the driver took me,
what I suppose is the usual "course" for tourists, through a quaint
Asiatic town inhabited by a mixed, foreign population of Hindus,
Malays, Tagals, and Chinese merchants, scattered among a large
indigenous population of Anamese fishermen, servants, and husbandmen,
through the colonial district, which looked asleep or dead, to the
markets, where the Chinamen and natives of India were in the full swing
and din of buying and selling all sorts of tropical fruits and rubbishy
French goods, and through what may be called the Government town or
official quarter. It was getting dark when I reached the wharf, and the
darkness enabled me to hobble unperceived on board on my bandaged feet.
The heat of the murky, lurid evening was awful, and as thousands of
mosquitoes took possession of the ship, all comfort was banished, and I
was glad when we steamed down the palm-fringed Saigon or Donnai waters,
and through the mangrove swamps at the mouths of the Me-kong river, and
past the lofty Cape St. Jacques, with its fort, into the open China
Sea.