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KNOX AUinOR OP "OTERLAXD THROCGH ASIA" "BACKSHEESH' " UXDERGROUXD " ETC. NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS FRAXKLIN SQCARE 1879 X4 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by IlAUPEK & BKOTIIEUS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Waslilngton. CONTENTS. Page I. Early Intercourse with China.. 11 II. Treaty-making 22 III. Anglo-Chinese Language 32 IV. The Comprador 44 V. Chinese Progress in Commercial Knowledge 53 VI. Establishment of Chinese Mer- chants in Foreign Countries.. G1 VII. Statistics of Chinese Trade 71 VIII. Something for American Mer- chants 81 IX. Steam Communication with Chi- na 8 r X. A Voyage over the Pacific 92 XL Sights in Canton 108 234G51 JOHN; OR, OUR CHINESE RELATIONS. I. EARLY mXERCOURSE WITH CHINA. The historian records that Arietta's pret- ty feet, twinkling in the brook, attracted the attention of the Duke of Normandy, and made her the mother of William the Conqueror. To the daughter of the tanner of Falaise we owe the Norman invasion of England, the establishment of consti- tutional government, the foundation and spread of the world-circling British empire. By a similar line of reasoning, we owe all that we possess to-day, as a nation, to the moon-eyed Celestials who a century ago cultivated the tea-plant on the sloping hill- 13 JOHN. sides of antipodal China. From China came tea; from tea came the odious tea- tax which was levied by England upon her American colonies , from the tea-tax came the historic " Boston Tea-party ;" from the Boston Tea-party and other defiant inci- dents came the war of the Revolution ; from the war came our independence ; from our independence came the present great- ness and glory of the nation known as the United States. If the eagle on our nation- al coat of arms should desire a resting- place for his feet, a tea-chest might form a pedestal not altogether inappropriate. Down to the time of the Revolution, nearly all cargoes of tea destined for the American colonies were brought by way of England. The prohibition of direct im- portation was an important factor in our troubles with the mother-country, particu- larly as the indirect transit compelled the payment of a heavy tax. After the war we could import as we chose ; the trade was carried on in English ships, and it was not EARLY nsTERCOrRSE WITH CtHNA. 13 until 1786 that a vessel fljing the Ameri- can flag sailed from American shores for China. Salem was her port of departure, and she was the pioneer in a commerce that subsequently assumed enormous pro- portions, and made fortunes for hundreds of merchants in "the Chinese trade." The experiment succeeded, and the venture was rapidly followed by others, so that early in the present century we had a considerable business with China. Salem was the first in the field, then came Boston, and later it was entered by Kew York. Who hears of Salem now as a centre of foreign trade? Her commerce is gone, and has left few ves- tiges beyond the fortunes which still re- main m some of her families, and the spa- cious dwellings and warehouses erected in the early days. To-day Salem is a peace- ful, prosperous town of Massachusetts, with none of the characteristics of a bustling entrepot or crowded mart. Long before her ships went to China she obtained an uncomfortable noteriety for her coniiec- 14 JOHN. tion with uncanny matters ; and the Salem witchcraft bids ialr to be remembered in history when Salem commerce is forgot- ten. "The evil that men do lives after them ; the good is oft interred with their bones." Wonderful were the stories wdiich the captains and sailors told on their return from the East, in the early days of the Chi- na trade. The fictions of the old chronicles were not altogether out of fashion, and their traces, as the chemists would say, are found at the present time in some of the traveller's tales that are told. Sir John Mandeville seems to have left his mantle lying around loose somewhere, and many of those who follow in his footsteps have tried it on. This veracious old chronicler visited the East more than five hundred years ago, and on his return he wrote an account of his trav- els, for the reason, as he says in his prefiice, " that if my memory should be found defec- tive, other noble and worthy men may re- dress and amend it." In speaking of Chi- EARLY INTERCOURSE WITH CHINA. 15 na, which was then known as Cathaj^, he says, " The greatest river of fresh water in the world is in that country, and where it is narrowest it is more than four miles broad ; it goes through the land of pygmies, where the people are small, being only three spans long. They are frequently at war with the birds of the country, which they kill and eat, and sometimes the birds kill and eat them. In the palace of the em- peror all the dishes used upon the table are of precious stones, either of jasper, or of crystal, or of fine gold . Vessels of silver are unknown, for they set no value on that metal, but they make of it steps and pillars and i^avements to halls and rooms." He says that in India diamonds grow upon rocks in the sea and in the mines ; " they grow two together of opposite sexes, and I have often," he saj's, "tried the experiment of raising young diamonds from a pair of old ones, just as one in this country might raise lambs from a pair of sheep." ^Ye pause a moment to take breath. 16 JOHN. Peace to the aslics of this champion of con- spicuous inaccuracy ! There are little grains of truth in tliis story of Sir John Mandeville. When he says that silver was used for steps and pil- lars for halls and rooms he was not abso- hitcly wrong, as that metal was thus em- ployed in olden time in the construction of certain parts of the imperial palace. In some of the guild-halls in the Chinese cit- ies to-day the ceiling is of silver, and a good many statues and other ornaments are of that valuable metal. But the Chi- nese are a practical people, and every cen- tury and decade they are more and more using bronze in place of silver for purely ornamental work. China absorbs annually a large amount of silver, and the balance of trade is so much in her favor that she has no difficulty in finding all she wants. The reference to the greatest river of fresh wa- ter in the world is doubtless to the Yang- Tse ; and, when Sir John was writing, the Yang-Tsc was certainly the largest known EARLY mTEKCOURSE WITH CHINA. 17 stream on the globe. America was undis- covered, and consequently Europe knew nothing of the Amazon and the Mississippi. A wise man once declared that it was an excellent provision of Providence to make great rivers run by large cities , he might have mentioned another curiosity of nature,, that the cities at the mouths of great rivers, are generally seaports. The rivers and sea- ports of China have been very useful to commerce and greatly facilitated the work of extending trade to foreign countries.. The Yang-Tse, the great river of Far Cath- ay, has proved a magnificent water-way, and. enabled the foreigner to carry his flag into the heart of the empire, American and English steamers stem its muddy current, and find it without a rival save in the western hemisphere. It was my fortune to ascend it six hundred miles from the sea ; at that point it was like the Mississippi at ^Memphis or Cairo, and I know of no other stream in the world which can begin to ri- val it in the volume of its commerce. To o 18 JOHN. pass a fleet of boats was an liourly occur-, lence for our steamer, and sometimes even more frequent than this. At all the cities there were long rows of these craft tied to the banks; and at Hankow, the jn-esent head of steam navigation, I think I am safe in saying tliere were thousands of boats, and the most of them were of no diminu- tive size. I know of nothing better than a voyage on the Yang-Tsc to impress a stran- ger with the great commercial importance of China. Down to the early part of this century, and later, China had maintained a position of comparative exclusiveness. "With the ex- ception of Canton, her ports were closed to the rest of the world, and even at that famous city the traflic was confined to a locality outside the municipal limits. The foreign merchants lived there, and thither went the Chinese merchants to exchange tea and silks for such produce of other hinds as was useful to their countrymen. The balance of trade was largely in favor EARLY IXTERCOUESE WITH CHINA. 19 of China, and this balance was paid in sil- ver, to the delight of John and the propor- tionate disgust of the foreigner. In course of time a way was found for equalizing the balance by means of opium, which was raised in enormous quantities in India. The Chinese were great consumers of the drug, and the English in India were great j)roducers ; nothing was more natu- ral than that the producer should attemj)t to supply the consumer. Chinese laws stood in the way, as the government had i:)rohibited the importation of the drug which was killing many thousands of its people annually, and bringing sorrow and degradation to flimilies all over the land. Though femous for their respect for laws at home, the English have little regard for those of other lands when they stand in the way of English commerce. India was a ruinous expense unless a market could be found for her opium. An English mer- chant in Hong-Kong said to me on this subject: "It was absolutely necessary to 20 JOHN. open the Chinese market to save India from ruin, and we could not possibly allow the Chinese to refuse." One is reminded of the countrj' boy who was trying with a hoe to dig a woodchuck from a lodge of rocks. When told that it was impossible to accom- plish his purpose with that implement, he replied : " 'Tain't no use talking ; I must dig him out,for there ain't no meat in the house." Opium-smuggling became a regular and honest employment among Englishmen, and not infrequently there were Americans with a hand in the business. The history of this curious jjhase of commerce would fill many a volume, as it extended over a con- siderable period, and covered amounts of an enormous aggregate. The boldness of the smugglers and the magnitude of their operations caused many remonstrances on the part of the Chinese government, and finally led to the seizure of a large quantity of opium and its subsequent destruction. Out of this affair grew the famous (or in- famous) " Opium War," in which China was EAPvLY INTEPvCOURSE AVITH CHES^A. 21 humbled, compelled to pay heavy damages, open other ports than Canton, and cede the island of Hong-Kong to England. The lat- ter made Hong-Kong a free port, and since its settlement it has prospered commercial- ly, less to the advantage of China than to the country that owns it. The Chinese au- thorities pronounce it a nest of smugglers, and declare that but for Hong-Kong the customs dues of the empire would be in- creased by many thousand pounds every year. Tliis is undoubtedly true ; but, in jus- tice to Hong-Kong, it should be stated that the smuggling is performed by the Chinese, and not by the English. The junks and oth- er craft go to Hong-Kong, where they buy and receive their cargoes ; then, at a favor- able opportunity, they run to the mainland, often by connivance of their own officials, and land their goods at obscure points. The craft are owmed and manned by Chinese, and the goods are under the same proprie- torship. Sometimes a junk may have a Portuguese captain, but rarely indeed is she commanded bv an Eno-lishman. JO UN. 11. TREATY-MAKING. TnE Oi^ium War was followed by other wars, and notably tliose of 1858 and 1860. The United States had a little hand in these matters, and we all know about Commodore Tatnall going to the relief of the British fleet at the Peiho, with the remark, which has since gained a world-wide fame, " Blood is thicker than water." Out of the various wars grew the English, French, Russian, and American treaties with China — treaties whose signature was virtually made at the cannon's mouth. An English artist once made a caricature of this treaty-making business, in which he represented a China- man affixing his signature to a document, while over him stood persons representing each of the al)ove-named powers; the four were holding pistols at tlie head of the un- TREATY-MAKING. 23 fortunate Celestial, and behind him were the muzzle of a cannon and a whole armful of bayonets. The picture was entitled " A Voluntary Act — China wishes to become one in the family of nations." The terms of the treaty between Great Britain and China permitted the subjects of her Majesty the Queen of England to trade in China and to reside there, and it gave in return full permission for the subjects of his Majesty the Emperor of China to trade and reside in the Bi'itisli dominions everywhere. Many had already gone tliere, and also to California, and their action v/as fully legal- ized by the treaty. The treaties with the other powers were substantially the same. I was told in China that the clause permit- ting the Chinese to go to other countries was not asked for, or even suggested, by the Chinese ambassador, but was inserted by the English envoy, and afterwards by the repre- sentatives of other powers, merely to make an appearance of fairness, and to round up a i^aragraph. 24 JOHN. I do not voiicli for the as it came to me on hearsay evidence only, and I do not know any way of confirming or disproving it. Be that as it may, the treaty as a whole was forced upon China quite in the manner depicted by the artist, and was no doubt as difficult for her to swallow as had been the ojDium pills hitherto crowded down her throat. And it is in consequence of that very treaty and its operations that the people of the Pacific -coast States are now complaining of the hordes of Chinese on their soil, praying their authorities to remove the incubus of cheap labor, and oc- casionally rising into open defiance of law and order. There is no use in denying that we are in an awkward position in the matter. Our case is like that of a man who entered an Arkansas village and declared that he " was spoiling for a fight." He roamed up and down the street, and at last found a villager who was willing to liave a brush with him for the sake of better acquaintance. TREATY-MAKING. 25 Half an hour later the stranger limped fjom the village much battered as to visage, rent and soiled as to garments, and lisping through the crevices of his freshly broken teeth, " Seems to me I was a leetle too peart with my tongue, and can't blame that villa- ger for licking of me." For a period whose limits one cannot define with exactness, the so-called "Chi- nese question " has been a theme of impor- tance. It is not by any means confined to the United States; in xVustralia and other British possessions, in South America, in Java, and in Japan even, the advent of John has led to discussions interminable, and ^n'omises to lead to interminable discussions more. The coming of the industrious and frugal Chinaman has troubled many lands and people, and caused a derangement of the system of local labor to an extent which many persons consider alarming. Prohib- itory laws have been passed in some in- stances, and heavy taxes levied in the hope of restraining the immigration ; the taxes 26 joiix. are paid and the immigration goes on, perhaps in less degree, but certainly it lias been in no instance altogether suspended. In California and Australia the people have defied law and risen in open vio- leuce against the obnoxious race. The mobs have been suppressed, but not without loss of life. In some of the conflicts between tlie races, John has shown that he can " strike back," and all the injury to life and limb has not been on the side of the party attacked. The growing frequency of these disturbances calls for an earnest in- tervention of the strong arm of the govern- ment, and an intervention in a twofold sense. The condition of the labor market in California and the temper of the great majority of the jicople demand a check to tlie immigration of Chinese. The rights guaranteed to every man dwelling beneath our flag require that government should protect all who have violated no law and are rightfully and properly on our soil. Most of the treaties have been revised, TREATY-MAKING. 27 but only in some of tlieir minor points ; the trade and emigration clause remains im- changed, and Chinese are at liberty to go to other countries, just as the subjects or citizens of those countries have a light to go to China. It is upon this point that a change is needed; and when the treaties next come up for revision, it will doubtless be brought under consideration. It has been frequently discussed by the foreign ambassadors and the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, and its importance is con- ceded by all. The Chinese expressed a will- ingness to revise the treaty and recall all their subjects, but what they will demand in return it is difficult to say. They see the dilemma in which the treaty powers are placed, and it is quite likely they will make the most of the situation, and secure impor- tant advantages for themselves. There is no doubt they would be glad to return to something like their former isolation, and, above all, to send the foreigner, bag and baggage, out of their country. 28 JOHN. From all I have heard, both from natives and foreigners, I am sure they would will- ingly tear up their treaties with us, recall their own people from other lands, and per- mit no more emigration, and pay every for- eigner now living in China the full value of his property there, and give him free j^as- sage to his home. Of course there are many exceptions, but it may be set down as a rule that the Chinese detest the foreigner, and only tolerate him because they must. Tlie feeling pervades all classes of the people, and not only the people, but the lower ani- mals. Chinese ponies snort and start when you come near them, the dogs bark at you, the cats snarl and flee with enlarged tails and elevated back-hair, and even the meek and ruminant cow takes a shy at you with her horns. On this latter point I could relate a har- rowing tale of how a friend and myself were pursued by an infuriated cow in a Chinese city, and how she would not be turned from her purpose, but kept after us for some ten TREATY-MAKING. 29 minutes or more. My friend ran swiftly, uud kept a little ahead of the beast ; of course I wouldn't be so undignified as to run from a cow, but I managed to keep at the side of my fleet friend, and came out a trifle in advance of him. We furnished free amusement to a crowd of Chinese, who looked and laughed, thinking it was capi- tal fun to see a couple of barbarians pur- sued by a Chinese cow, and never stopping to consider how the barbarians might like it. But the tables are turned, and more than turned, in San Francisco and Melbourne, where the white man has a great deal of sport at Chinese expense. In each of those cities it is not unusual to see a large dog pursuing a frightened Celestial, amid the jeers of a group of voters who have set the brute to his work. There are those who fear that the Chi- nese, unless restrained, will overrun Ameri- ca, take control of the labor market, and ultimately secure the monopoly of many branches of commercial enterprise. Some 30 JOHN. of these are alarmists, and see great calam- ities in the immediate future, and some are demagogues, who talk what they do not be- lieve, because it is for their political inter- est to do so. But there are others who judge the future by the past, and have giv- en careful study to the question ; they be- lieve that the present evil will go on increas- ing steadily, but not rapidly ; and while there is no immediate danger to be feared, it is well to consider the distant future. Estimating the number of Chinese in the United States at a quarter of a million, and our whole population at a round forty mill- ions, we can see no immediate danger to our prosperity or safety. Our annual increase is quite as great as any Chinese immigra- tion in its most flourishing period, and there is little probability that their numerical proportions will be larger than at present. As is well known, not one emigrant in a thousand brings his family. The American consul at Hong-Kong informed mc that while nearly twenty-five thousand Chinese TREATY-MAKING. 31 men went from that port to San Francisco in one year, there were less than two hun- dred women, and this has been about the proportion ever since the emigration began. Of Chinese children born in America there are barely sufficient to fill an ordinary church, and certainly we must be timid in- deed if we have fears of these. Diy np the source, and the stream will disappear in time. We have only to revise our treaties so as to jDrevent the advent of new immigrants, and leave the matter of the return of those now in America quite out of consideration. Tempus edax rerum will steadily reduce the number of those who stay, and by the beginning of the com- ing century less than half the present num- ber will be alive. Another twenty -five years will make still further havoc, and long before the celebration of our second centennial the last Chinese among us will have gone to his grave, and left us a free and happy people. JOHN. III. ANGLO-CHINESE LANGUAGE. To our commercial intercourse Avitli Chi- na wc are indebted for the invention of modern times known as " pigeon Englisli." In attempting to pronounce the word " bus- iness," the Chinese were formerly unable to get nearer to the real sound than " pidgin" or " pigeon ;" hence the adoption of that word, which means nothing more nor less tlian " business." Pigeon English is there- fore business English, and is the language of commerce at the open ports of China, or wherever else the native and foreigner come in contact. A pigeon French has made its appearance in Saigon and at other places, and is steadily increasing as French com- merce has increased. On the frontier line between Ilussia and China there is an im- portant trading-jDoint — Kiachta— where the ANGLO-CHINESE LANGUAGE. 33 commerce of the two empires was exclusive- ly conducted for a century and a half. In 18G6 I visited Kiaclita, and found that a pigeon Russian existed there, and was the medium of commercial transactions be- tween the Russian and Chinese merchants. Long ago tlie Portuguese at Macao had a corresponding jargon for their intercourse with the Chinese ; and it may be safely stat- ed that wherever tlie Chinese have estab- lished permanent relations with any coun- try, a language of trade has immediately sprung into existence, and is developed as time rolls on and its necessities multiply. The decline in Portuguese trade with China was accompanied with a correspond- ing decline in the language, but it left its impress upon the more recent pigeon Eng- lish, which contains many Portuguese words. Pigeon English is a language by itself, with very little inflection either in noun, pronoun, or verb, and with a few words doing duty for many. The Chinese learn it readily, as they have no grammati- 3 34 JOHN. cal giants to wrestle with in mastering it, and the foreigners are quite ready to meet them on the road and adapt their phrase- ology to its requirements. The Chinese has only to commit to memory a few hundred words and know their meaning ; the for- eigner (if he be English-speaking) has less than a hundred foreign words to learn, to- gether with the peculiar construction of phrases. The Chinese have printed vocab- ularies in which the foreign word and its meaning are set forth in Chinese characters, and thus tliey have no occasion to trouble themselves with the alphabet of the stranger. These books are specially intended for the use of compradares and servants in foreign employ, and are so small that they can be readily carried in the pocket. It is not un- usual to see a servant occupying his spare moments in studying one of these volumes, and I remember a boy that waited on me in Shanghai who used to whip out his book and catch the intervals between the various courses of my dinner. When I AXGLO-CHINESE LAIsGUAGE. 35 called for anything, the book disaiDpeared, as if by magic, in the folds of his capacious sleeve ; and the instant my wants were sup- plied he resumed his studies. Daily I could perceive progress in his lingual accomplish- ments, and before the end of a fortnight he was ready to graduate with high honor. I fear his honesty was not equal to his profi- ciency, as I found that my handkerchiefs disajDpeared mysteriously while I was in his care, and the confusion of tongues un- der which he labored caused him to mis- take two of my silver dollars for his own. I hope he used them properly, and did not waste them in riotous living. In pigeon English the pronouns he., slie^ it, and thei/ are generally expressed by the single pronoun lie. All the forms of the first person are included in my, and those of the second person in you. When we come to the verbs, we find that action, in- tention, existence, and kindred conditions are covered by hab, helongey, and can do. Va- rious forms of possession are expressed by 36 JOHN. catcliee (catch), ^\'hile can do is particular!}^ applied to ability or power, and is also used to imply affirmation or negation. Thus: " Can do walkee ?" means "Are you able to walk ?" If so, the response would be " can do," while " no can do" would imj^ly inabil- ity to indulge in pedestrianism. Belongey comes from "belong," and is often short- ened to a single syllable, Vlong. It is very much employed, owing to the many shades of meaning of which it is capable. Thus : " I live in Hong-Kong" would be rendered " My belongey Hong-Kong side," and " You are very large " would be proj^erly translat- ed " You belongey too muchee big piecee." One day on a steamer, a servant brought me the captain's invitation to join him in the examination of a bottle of wine in the cab- in. The message was thus delivered : " He captain bottom-side talkce you b'longey chop-chop dlinko one piecee winec." The nearest literal rendering of the above would ])C, " The captain is below, and says you are to come immediately to drink one piece AXGLO-CnrXESE LANGUAGE, 37 (glass) of wine." I replied, " Can do," and the dialogue ended. The Chinese find great difficulty in pro- nouncing r, which they almost invariably convert into I. They have a tendency to add a vowel sound (o or e) to words ending with a consonant. Bearing these points in mind, we readily see how " drink" becomes dlinJc'O, and "brown" Noicnee. Final d and t are awkward for them to handle, and th is to their lips an abomination of first- class dimensions. "Child" becomes chilo, and " cold" is transformed to coIo, in pigeon English, "That," and other words begin- ning with th, generally lose the sound of h, though sometimes they retain h and drop the t before it. Thus in the preceding paragraph "he captain" means "the cap- tain," and this form of speaking is fre- quently encountered. "Side" is used for position, and the vocabulary contains in- side, outside, dottom-side (below), and top-side (above). Chop-cliop means " fast," " quick," " immediately ;" man-man means " slowly," 284G5I 33 JOHN. " slower," "gently," in the south of China ; while at Hankow, on the Yang-Tsc, it means exactly the reverse. At Canton or Swatow, if you say man-man to your boatmen, they will cease rowing or will proceed very light- ly ; say the same thing to your boatmen at Hankow or Ichang, and they will pull away with redoubled energy. The author of the Breitman ballads has made an interesting little volume entitled " Pidgin-English Sing-Song." When I en- tered a bookstore in Shanghai and asked for a vocabulary of Chinese, Mr. Leland's book was handed to me, with tlie remark that it was the best thing of the kind in existence. The bright-witted Hans has made a series of short poems, stories, and the like in the quaint jargon of the East, together with a quantity of proverbs more or less familiar to Occidentals. As an illus- tration of tlie language, I will quote a few of the " wise saws and modern instances :" " Who man swim best, t'hat man most a:ettee dlown ; Who lidcc best be most catch tumble down." AJNGLO-CnrXESE LANGUAGE. 39 " One piecee blind man healee best, maskee ; One piecee deaf man makee best look-see." " One man who never leedee, Like one dly inkstand be ; You turn he top-side downey, No ink luu outside he." "Suppose one man much bad— how bad he be, One uot'her bad man may be flaid of he." One day I ventured to put a well-known rhj'uie into pigeon English, adhering as closely as possible to the construction of the language, and preserving, at the same time, the measure of the verse. The follow- ing is the result: MALY AND HE LITTEE LAMB. Maly hab one piecee lamb, He wool all same he snow. What time he Maly b'long one side, T'hat lamb make all same go. One time he Maly b'longey school, And b'longey school t'hat lamb. Larn-pidgiu chilos bobbely make Like poundee on tam-tam. He massa wantchee lamb go home ; T'hat lamb he no can do. . Bimeby he Maly go outside, And fiudee lamb there too. 40 JOHN. Time Maly come t'hat piecee lamb, He luu on Maly side, All same chiu-chiD, "you my good fliu, What man say no, he lied." "What for he lamb t'hat muchee flin ?" lie littee chilos cly. "That Maly makee muchee fliu," ^ He massa talkee, hi ! The rapid spread of this language in tlie last twenty years, by reason of the large emigration of the Chinese to other lands, renders it worthy of serious consideration. One writer predicts that the time is not far distant wdien it will be necessary to render the Bible into pigeon English, and another says that if English is to become the cos- mopolitan language of commerce, it will have to borrow from the Chinese as much monosyllable and as little inflection as pos- sible. A grammar of English for the nse of Orientals has been projected in which the plurals of nouns and the past tenses of verbs should be regular, and the auxiliaries and all other perjjlexities of our language reduced to tlie minhnum. According to ANGLO-Cni]S'ESE LANGUAGE. 41 tliis plan, the plural of " sheep " -u-oulcl be slieeps ; of "mouse," mouses; and that of " man," mans. Among the verbs we should have go-ecl in place of "went," and com-ed in place of " came." The proposition will doubtless develop a smile on the face of the reader, but it certainly contains matter for serious consideration. Comparatively few of the foreign resi- dents of China take the trouble to learn the language of the country, but content themselves with the use of pigeon English in their transactions with the natives. In Shanghai I asked a merchant who had been twelve years in that city the names of the Chinese numerals from one to ten. " I don't know," was his reply ; " I never bothered myself to learn, as I can get along well enough in pigeon English." I did not ex- pect him to be able to speak Chinese, but I certainly thought he should be able to count in that tongue. Many of the foreigners in the Far East use occasional native words in conversation 42 jonx. among themselves. This cusfom is not con- fined to China and Japan, but prevails in Siam, Java, India, Ceylon, and, in fact, in pretty nearly every country I have visited. " Maskee ; come in," said an American mer- chant in Yokohama, to whom I was excusing myself from entering his office by reason of the muddiness of my boots. {Maskee means " never mind.") " Come to tiffin to-morrow at twelve," said the same gentleman — t{fiii being the word which means " lunch " or " mid-day meal." It is printed on the bills of fire in the hotels, and is written or spoken twenty times where " lunch" is used once. CumsliaiD means " gift " or " bribe ;" sampan is a " boat," and coolie is a " laborer." All these words and many others have fair- ly driven their English equivalents quite out of sight, or into a retirement from which they rarely emerge. Some of the words and phrases in our language come from the Orient: cash, denoting money, is purely Chinese, it being {\\c name of the smallest copper coin in the land of the Celestials. AIsGLO-CHENESE LAIsGUAGE. 43 " My no catch ee cash, my no can play fan- tan." Fan-tan is a Chinese game of chance ; and as the gambler of every country gen- erally insists upon ready money from the wooers of the fickle goddess, the meaning of the rest of the sentence is obvious. We frequently hear a New York or Boston shop- keeper pronounce his goods " first chop," and he 23robably does so without thinking that he is using Chinese. Chop means la- bel, stamp, or inscription, and first cho^) is the superlative of excellence and good qual- ity. The Chinese vocabulary is invading ours, just as the people of the Flowery King- dom are invading the United States and the English colonies. Is not this a phase of the Oriental question which demands our attention ? 44 joim. IV. THE COMPRADOR. The progress of the Chinese in tlie United States in the way of business and commer- cial matters in general (not including ordi- nary labor) is not as rapid as it has been in the Far East. When the ports of the empire were opened, and for years afterwards, busi- ness was in European* hands, and the Chi- nese mercliant had little to do with it. The foreigner found it convenient to employ a Chinese to transact his business w^ith the natives, and in time the convenience became a necessity. The person thus employed was (and is) called a comprador^ the name being * By the term "European" are included all foreign- erf, whether from Europe or America. Japanese, East Iiidiane, Malaj's, and tlic like are usually grouped as "Asiatics;" persons born in Asia of mixed parentage arc called "Eurasians," the name being formed from tlie two words Europe and Asia. THE COMPKADOR. 45 borrowed from the Portuguese ; and so im- portant did the comprador become that the merchant could not get along without him. He bought the tea, silk, porcelain, and oth- er goods that were wanted for export, and he sold all the imported articles, whether their value was great or small ; he managed the insurances and shipments ; he employed all the servants about the establishment, and was responsible for their honesty ; lie kept the bank account ; in fact, he did so much that the wonder is the merchant could find anytliing at all to lay his hand to. John Comprador was invariably a shrewd, clear-headed native, and watched his mas- ter's interest with a careful eye. That he looked out for his own as well is not to be wondered at, and it is pretty certain that he generally did. He had certain legiti- mate " squeezes " on nearly everything he did ; he had a commission on the servants he employed, on the provisions he bought, and on all the other general expenses of the house. One can see with half a glance 4G joim. what a chance he had hi transactions with the native merchants. A thousand chests of tea or as many packages of silk could pay him ever so small a squeeze, and the aggre- gate would be a good addition to his regu- lar wages. The comprador was earnest, ac- tive, and frugal, and by strict attention to business and rigid economy he could save five or ten thousand dollars a year out of an income of one thousand. Nobody cared if he did, as he was worth the money ; he saved a deal of trouble and exertion on the part of the foreigner, and these are no joke in a country where, for a large part of the year, the operation of winking your riglit eye will throw you into a perspiration. At first a great convenience, the compra- dor soon became a necessity. Merchants Ijcgan to think tliey were putting too much in the hands of the native, and some of them tried to do witliout him. Vain hope ! lie was an Old Man of the Sea whom they could not shake off*. Probably there are no people in the world who understand the system of THE COMPRADOR. 47 guilds and trades - unions better than the Chinese. They make combinations quite surpassing any of European or American origin, and the combinations hold together with iron tenacity. Had the foreign merchants begun origi- nally to deal directly with the natives, they might have done so to this day ; but hav- ing once adopted the comprador, he became a link in the chain of guilds and unions, and could not be set aside. Suppose I am in business in Shanghai, and determine to do without a comprador and attend to my own purchases. I go to a native qierchant and ask for his tea samples; he shows them, and I ask the price of a thousand chests. " IS'o have got," is the reply , " no can catchee." I go to another, and another, with the same result; not one has a pound of tea to sell to me. The guild has ordered it ; and until I deal through a comprador I can do nothing in tea, or silk, or wax, or any other Chinese product. Let me send my comprador, I get the market quotations 48 JOHN. at once. So it goes with all that one buys or sells in Chinese ports, and so it goes with nearly all dealings with Chinese merchants. Their guilds are the most comprehensive and most perfect in their operations of all I have seen in any part of the world. It is interesting (and pitiful too) to see how completely the merchant in Far Cathay is in the hands of the comprador. Go into any large house at Shanghai or Hong-Kong and ask any question concerning the mar- ket ; the chances are twenty to one that the person you address will turn to the compra- dor and repeat the inquiry. The compra- dor^s answer is final, and no one ever ap- peals from it — at least I have never known an appeal. If you have a draft to cash, it is the comprador who determines the rate of exchange and counts out the money; in the latter act he is assisted by another per- sonage, known as a " shroff." The currency of the East is the Mexican dollar, and it has l^ecn so extensively counterfeited that great J THE COMPRADOR. 49 care is necessary to distinguish the genuine from the imitation. Here, again, the foreign merchants have left the matter to the native ; it is the latter who settles the matter, and by whom every dollar is handled. The class of employes known as " shroffs " are found in every banking establishment and every com- mercial house of any importance. In the smaller houses the comprador combines the duties of shroff with his own, but in the larger concerns he does not do so. The shroff is an autocrat by whose side the Em- peror of Russia pales to insignificance. His word is absolutism in the extreme ; and if you venture to doubt it, his glance is more withering than the breath of the upas- tree. One day I drew some money from a lead- ing house on which I had a letter of credit, and the amoimt was paid to me in Mexicans. I took my bag of dollars to my hotel, and locked it in my trunk ; and a fews days later, wishing to obtain some notes of the Hong- 4 50 JOHN-. Kong and Shanghai Bank, I proceeded with the bag aforesaid to that establishment. I stated my wants, and the shroff was called to count my dollars. He rejected about ten per cent, of the coins ; and on my expostu- lating, and saying that I received them from Blank & Co., and was sure they were all right, he turned on me a look that would have appalled a royal Bengal tiger. I felt my heart sink in my boots, and would fain have crei:)t under a walnut shell had there been one handy. Not a word did he utter, but his contemptuous look and equally con- temptuous wave of the hand spoke a couple of folio volumes (calf-bound) at least. Ver- dantly I appealed to the meek foreigner to whom I had addressed myself at first ; he spoke not, but shook his head to the extent of a small octavo, which said, " The shroff is king here, and I am nothing." Angrily I gathered up my monej^, swept it into the bag, rejected the notes which liad been counted forme, and walked out of the place. Then they knew me for a novice. A year's THE COMPRADOR. 51 residence in the country would have taught Die to bow to the decision of the shrofF as to that of the Chief-justice of the Supreme Court of the land. On my arrival in Shanghai, I found in my trunk — pity I can't do so daily ! — an Ameri- can gold i^iece of twenty dollars. I had a few purchases to make, and thought it a good opportunity to get rid of this stray coin. I bought some books, and tendered the piece. The party who served me was one of the proprietors, but he was dumb as to its value. " Comprador, how much is this worth ?" said he to that functionary at the cash-box, and the reply was, " Eighteen forty." Eighteen dollars and forty cents in silver struck me as rather low for a twenty- dollar gold piece, and so I bagged the coin, paid in Mexicans, and went to the next shop I wished to patronize. There the same scene M^as enacted, with the difference that the response was, " Seventeen twenty.-' I suggested that I had just been offered eighteen forty, but neither comprador nor 52 JOHN. clerk ventured a reply : the former would not, and the latter dared not. In another shop I was offered nineteen ten, and in another nineteen thirty. I final- ly sold it for twenty dollars and twenty-five cents in silver, and had good opportunity to think of the possible and probable inten- tions of those comj)radores to squeeze that gold piece. Nineteen Thirty was not al- together unreasonable, but Mr. Seventeen Twenty was of exalted views, and doubt- less had a fiimily to suj)port. And if one of them had oflered me five dollars and a half for the coin, I have not the slightest doubt that his principal would have re- mained dumb as a sheep before him, and ventured not the slightest remonstrance. Go where you will, in all the great houses, banking or otherwise, of the open ports of China, you will find all the financial affairs of the concern in Chinese hands, and con- trolled by them in the most despotic man- ner. CHENESE PROGRESS. 53 V. CHINESE PROGRESS IN COMMERCIAL KNOWLEDGE. TiiE result of this association of the for- eigner and the Chinese in business has been not altogether to the advantage of the for- mer. The Chinese has learned the lesson which the foreigner has unintentionally taught him, and learned it well. He has set up for himself, and, with his keenness and frugality, is proving more than a match for his instructor. In all the Chinese ports there are Chinese banks, Chinese insurance companies, Chi- nese boards of trade, Chinese steamship companies, and other concerns, all in Chi- nese management and supported by Chi- nese capital. There are Chinese importers and exporters, and they have their agencies in London and Marseilles, San Francisco 54 JOHN. and New York, so that tliey can transact any desired business without calling a mid- dle man to their aid. Even where they liave no direct agencies, the leading Chinese houses have established their credit with manufacturers in England and elsewhere, so that they can make their purchases side by side with a foreign competitor, and with the certainty of selling directly to the na- tive jobber or retailer without risking the possible squeeze of the comprador. Foreign commerce and foreign relations were forced uj^on China, and were a splen- did thing for us at the start ; the Chinese are taking their revenge now, and in a way quite unexpected to us, and which some of us pronounce unfair. The evil, if we may so call it, has grown to enormous jDropor- tions, and is growing every year. Tlie sugar trade of Amoy and Formosa has gone entirely into Chinese hands. It was formerly a source of handsome income to several foreign houses. Nearly all the flour from San Francisco to China is ou Chi- CnrXESE PROGRESS. 55 nese account ; a foreigner might touch it with a ten -foot pole, i^erhaps, when the sacks are piled upon the dock, but it would be unsafe for him to touch it in any other way. The rice trade between China and other countries is almost entirely in Chinese hands, and the chances are that the Celes- tials will have a monopoly of it within half a decade. The native merchant is satisfied wdth a veiy small profit, such as w^ould not tempt a foreigner, and thus the foreigner is ousted. I know of one transaction — a ship- ment of flour from San Francisco to Hong- Kong — in which the net profit was exactly half a cent per sack, and the merchant was quite content. In another case a Chinese had bought twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of goods, and sold them next day for an advance of a hundred dollars. " My makee good pigeon allee same likee t'hat," he said in my hearing, and the twinkle of his eye showed that he was satisfied with the operation, and ready for another like it. 56 JOHN. Year by year foreigners are retiring from China and Japan, some by the not unusual process of failure, and others by the slower but more desu-able means of liquidation. Some go away in wrath and profanity, and vaguely say that there has been " overtrad- ing in the East," and " the country has been bought out," while others frankly confess that the Chinese are too much for them. They cannot live on the wonderfully small profits which content the Chinese, and after making a thorough trial of business, they confess themselves worsted. Buyers will generally patronize the cheapest market, ir- respective of nationality; and you may talk yourself hoarse about the necessity of sup- porting foreign trade and all that, but the chances are even you will buy of a Chinese because he will sell cheaper than a Euro- 2)ean. In Yokohama I wanted some clothing suited to the climate, and proceeded, at the advice of a resident friend, to the shop of Quoug Chang, tailor. Mr. Chang was polite CHDsESE PROGRESS. 57 and ready for business ; he showed mo sam- ples of his goods, and gave me his prices, and the latter were certainly reasonable. lie offered to make ;me a complete suit — *''no fittee no takee" — of blue serge for ten dollars. With a fragment of the cloth I went to a foreign tailor, who wanted sev- enteen dollars for the same article. Other prices were in proportion ; and I need hard- ly say that Quong Chang was my tailor dur- ing my stay in Yokohama, and that he rang with the utmost caution every Mexican dol- lar I paid him, lest he might unwittingly take in a counterfeit. Perhaps the cut of his clothing was not quite up to that of the foreigner, but the sewing was the same, as it was done in both cases by native workmen. But it required a sharp eye to distinguish the one from the other ; and I have never seen reason to re- gret my patronage of the Celestial. The reason of the difference in price is easy to see. Quong Chang had a small shop, while Mr. Foreigner had a large one ; Q, C. lived 58 JOHN. on ten cents a day, while F. nebded three or four dollars ; Q. C. had his family in a single back-room, while F.'s fjimily had a house to itself; Q. C, rode out on foot gen- erally, while F. had a carriage with horse and groom ; Q. C. was content with a liv- ing and a trifle beyond, while F. wanted to make a fortune in ten years and go home. If Quong could not make fifty cents profit on the transaction, he would put up with twentj^-five, or even ten, wdiile his competi- tor would not think the job worth touch- ing unless it netted at least twenty-five jDer cent, on the amount of money handled. I have thus detailed this matter, as it is a good illustration of the general competi- tion between Chinese and foreigners in the East. In every instance the Chinese has the best of it, and there is no possible way to get ahead of him, or even to draw along- side. What with his guilds and the com- prador drag on the foreigner, on the one liand, and his economic habits of life and the transaction of business, on the other, CHINESE PROGRESS. 59 John is entirely at ease, and his power is growing every clay. When the Chinese ports w^ere first open- ed, the foreign trade went into English and American hands, but in a few years the Ger- mans came in and took a large share of it. They could live and work cheaper than their competitors, and for a considerable W' hile they flourished. But when the Chi- nese came to the front, all others suffered alike, as the new competitor could beat each and every one of them in the ability to get along with small profits. A Chinese ofiicial said one clay to a friend of mine, "Englishman and Melican man come here makee big pigeon ; bimeby long come Ger- man man eatee up Englishman and Meli- can man ; Chinaman come now, he makee eat up German man ; some time you makee see Chinaman eatee every ting." There is every reason to believe that his prediction will be fulfilled in the main; that the " eatee up " is going on pretty rapidly a great many persons can testify. CO JOHN. In IIoug-Kong the Cliinese houses are in- creasing annually, while the English and other foreign ones are decreasing. Rows of stores formerly occupied by English mer- chants have been given up to Chinese, and the number grows and grows witli each re- curring season. Nineteen twentieths of the j)opulation of Hong-Kong are Chinese, and there is not a branch of business into which they have not entered. They have ship- ping and commercial houses; steamship, banking, and insurance companies, as I have already mentioned ; and you can buy in their shops nearly every article of foreign man- ufacture that you can buy in the English stores, and almost invariably at a lower price. The complete free trade established at Hong-Kong has been good for the Eng- lish manufacturer, but not so for the Eng- lish merchant who established himself in the colony. So much for John on his own soil. Let us sec what he has done in carrying the war into the enemy's country. CHINESE MERC HANTS. 61 VI. ESTABLISHMENT OF CHIXESE MER- CHANTS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES. We are all pretty well aware of what they have done in California, and so I will not take lip that branch of the subject. In all the open ports of Japan the Chinese are thick- 1}' established. Their competition is more with Europeans than with the Japanese, and they have succeeded in making a very large inroad into the profits of the foreigner, though less so than at Hong-Kong, Shang- hai, or the other Chinese ports. Going west from Hong-Kong, we come to Cochin China, the French possession, of which Sai-gon is the capital. There the Chinese have been steadily cutting into the trade, until they have by far the best of it, and have driven some foreign houses out of business. Dur- mg 187G the Chinese shipped, nine tenths of 62 JOHN. the rice crop, amounting to nearly 6,000,000 piculs (133 pounds to the picul). All other articles of export were shipped by them, with a very few exceptions, and they have at least five sixths of the import trade. Much of the shipment is to Hong-Kong, and a great portion of it is in Chinese vessels, while many of the English ships find it ex- pedient to employ Chinese agents. The Hong-Kong agency of the only line of steamers running to Bang-kok, Siam, is Chinese ; and when I purchased my ticket by one of the company's ships, I was obliged to apply to the head of the Yuen Fat Hong, and make my negotiations with him. The captain told me that all the rice carried by him or his companion vessels was on Chinese account ; and I found on reaching Bang-kok a Chinese line of steamers run- ning to Singapore. Foreign business at Bang-kok grows smaller each year, while Chinese business increases. The Celestial has much of the local trade in Bang-kok. I was told that the government licenses for CHENESE MEECHANTS. 63 the sale of spirits were in the hands of a Chinese, while another had the monopoly of gambling-houses. At Singapore there are more than 100,000 Chinese, one fourth as many Malays, and about 1000 Europeans. The Chinese have gained in numbers, while the Europeans have lost, in spite of the steadily increas- ing importance of Singapore. While I was there a quarrel arose between the Chinese and foreign merchants — or rather it was in progress when I arrived — concerning the delivery of pepper, gambler, and other ar- ticles of merchandise which the former sell to the latter. The disputed point was on a matter of delivery, the latter demanding and the former refusing to make delivery at the foreign go-downs (warehouses). The foreigners united, and agreed not to buy until the point was yielded to them ; the Chinese united, and refused to sell except at their own go-downs. See the advantage of a Chinese combina- tion over a foreign one. When I left Sin2:a- G4 JOHN. jDore two of the foreign houses had broken from the combination, and were buying pepper and gambier on the terms of the Chinese, while the latter were as firm as the rock of Gibraltar. I don't know who won the fight, but I think it is not hard to guess, especially as there had been similar troubles before, in w^hich the Chinese came out ahead. Certainly they are a most inde- fatigable lot of merchants, and it is really a wonder how so many of the natives of the Flowery Kingdom manage to make a liv- ing on the little island of Singapore. There is not much to choose in that city between the Chinese and the Malay. Deal with one and you will generally wdsh you had dealt with the other — or neither. Java has not been extensively overrun by the Chinese, owung to certain restrictions that tlie Dutch have put upon their coming. The authorities claim the right to say who may or may not reside in Java, and not in- frequently they put a negative on the ad- vent of foreigners, not only of Chinese, but CniXESE MERCHANTS. bO of other nationalities. Nevertheless, there is a large number of them, and they are found in all parts of the island, as keenly alive lo industry and profit as anywhere else. Many employments are almost or entirely in their hands; opium and liquor licenses are gen- erally farmed out to Chinese contractors, and they rent and manage many of the rice, coffee, and other estates. "When 1 wanted to hire a carriage for a journey into the in- terior, I was told that all such vehicles were in the hands of the Chinese, and the high price I was forced to pay found its way into a Celestial's pocket. In Batavia and other ports of Java the Chinese are largely interested in commerce, and their monojioly of the rice trade is well- nigh complete. They import rice from Siam, Cochin China, and Burmah, as the rice crop of Java is not sufficient to meet the demand upon the island. Gradually they have ex- tended the traffic until the local trade is completely in their hands ; and if any out- sider ventures to interfere Avitli them, he is 5 GG JOHN. severely pimislied. Some time ago a Ba- taviau firm (uot Chinese) thought it saw a chauce for profit in rice, and accordingly imported a cargo from Siam. But, to the surprise of the speculators, they found they could not sell the rice at any figure; the guild of Chinese merchants had given the order, and nobody would purchase. It was held for several weeks, and finally sold at a slight loss, and you may be sure that the firm in question has been careful to keep out of rice since that transaction. In the interior of Java you find many Chinese, and they seem to have come to stay. A goodly proportion have married and settled ; and as Chinese wives are scarce, they have intermarried with the Javanese, just as in Siam they take to themselves Si- amese wives. I was interested and amused at a road-side inn in Java, wdiere I stopped for luncheon, to find a Chinese proprietor with a Javanese household. A couple of children of China-Javanese blood were run- ning about the house, and a third was in CniNESE MEECHANTS. G7 the arms of the bnxom mother, who sat near the box where John kept his cash. She was one of the fair of the land, and appeared to look with respect and obedience upon her liege lord, who was not over handsome. I had been told that the Javanese (like the Siamese) women are quite fond of taking Chinese husbands, who are pretty sure to care for and support them, which is not al- ways the case with their own countrymen. In Manila, Penang, and Mahicca the Chi- nese have established themselves quite as firmly as in Singapore and Java, particular- ly in Penang, where they leave compara- tively little to the foreigner. At Moulmein and Rangoon, in Burmah, they are abundant and prosperous, and I could almost repeat word for word, in writing of their course in Rangoon, what I have written about Sai-gon. The chief export of Rangoon is rice, and a Chinese takes as naturally to the rice trade as a duck to water. He has taken to it in Rangoon, and taken it in — not so fully as in Sai-gon, since there is a large export to 68 JOKN. England and India in English hands, but sufficiently to cause discontent to foreign traders. His control of the rice trade is yearly increasing, and he has steamship lines of his own, so that he is under obli- gations to nobody. TJie British India Steam Navigation Com2)auy is an important concern, possess- ing many ships, and performing service over many routes. They have, among oth- ers, a line between Calcutta and Singapore, touching at Rangoon, Moulmein, Penang, and Malacca, and carrying the mails under a government contract. When tliey first be- gan the service, they had a fine business in carrying freight, and not a shij) w^ent either way without a full cargo at remunerative rates. From Rangoon and the other way ports to Singapore, and from Singapore to •Rangoon, the shippers were nearly all Chi- nese, as they had the lion's share of the business on that route. But a change came over the spirit of the dream of the B. I. S. N. Company. They CHINESE MERCHANTS. G9 Lad a couple of steamers whicli had be- come old and worn in the service, and they were astonished and delighted one day Avhen some of the Chinese merchants offer- ed to purchase the gamy ships aforesaid. The directors laughed as they received the money and transferred the vessels, and they laughed long and often when they thought how com^oletely they had sold the Celestials in selling them the antiquated craft. The pigtailed merchants started a line between Rangoon and Singapore with their two steamers, and then the joke was complete. But in a very short time the freight list of the English company declined, and each month it declined more and more. The new line had all the business; its managers sent to London and bought some new steamers ; it extended its service to the coast of Sumatra, and received there- for a subsidy from the government of the- JsTetherlands Indies ; and it has gone on prospering and prosperous ever since. The British India Company runs its steamers TO JOHN. with tlie liglitest cargoes, and sometimes none at all, and but for its mail contract it would withdraw altogether from that par- ticular service. Its directors laugh no more at the verdancy of the Chinese in buying that pair of venerable steamers, and are in- clined to avoid the subject. Westward beyond Burmah the Chinese have not penetrated in great numbers, but they are for from unknown. They are in Ceylon, and in Calcutta, Bombay, and other cities of British India, and some of them have strayed to London and a few of the Continental cities. In Calcutta and Bom- bay they have a monopoly of the manufact- ure of bamboo chairs and baskets, and many of them have set up as tailors, boot- makers, and the like, to the disgust of their competitors. Thus ftir the Chinese ques- tion has no importance in India; but if we may judge of that country by others where tlie Celestials have taken foothold, its dis- cussion in the land of tlie Vedas and Shastas cannot be long delayed. STATISTICS OF CniiN'ESE TliADE. VII. STATISTICS OF CHINESE TRADE. China lias been a trading nation consid- erably against her will, and nearly every concession relative to foreign commerce has been forced from her at the cannon's mouth. China was once the only producer of tea in the world. Other nations wanted her tea and sent ships there to get it. Her silk was also in demand, and brought a high price, and her porcelain wares and ivory carvings were unrivalled. The other nations had very little that was wanted in China, and consequently nearly all the purchases in the Celestial Empire were paid for with solid silver. For centuries there has been a steady stream of silver poured into China, and the end is not yet ; Mexican and other dollars are melted into " sycee," and in this shape form a very inconvenient medium of Va JOHN. exchauge. The model for a block of sycee silver is a woman's shoe ; aud as there is no national standard for the size of a Chinese woman's foot, the ingots vary in size, and necessitate the weigliing of every lot of silver bought or sold. Each party to the transaction weighs the metal, and it some- times liai)pens that a difference in the weighing apparatus leads to a quarrel. A local poem thus describes this Oriental currency : "Some ask me what the cause may be That Chinese silver's called sijcee. But probably they call it so Because they sigh to see it go." I have elsewhere alluded to Kiachta, on the Mongolian frontier, which was founded in 1727 as an entrepot of international com- merce between Russia and Cliina. Russia consumed a great deal of tea, and for a hun- dred and fifty years all the tea used in the JMuscovite Empire was imported through Kiachta. Alarmed at the great drain of silver to jDay for this tea, the Russian gov- STATISTICS OF CHINESE TRADE. 73 ernmcDt, early in the present century, or- dered that the importation of tea sbould be paid for " Tvith articles of Russian man- ufacture," and not with coin. The wheels of commerce were blocked by this edict, but only for a short time. The merchants at the frontier were not slow to devise a means of keeping the word of promise to the ear and breaking it to the hope. The Russians cast their silver money into idols of varying sizes and weights ; and as the material was of coin standard, the value was readily determined by weight. These idols were clearly " articles of Russian man- ufacture," and met the requirements of the law. The government again interfered, on the ground that a Christian nation should not lend itself to the encouragement of idol- atry by making heathen images. Then the merchants adopted the shoe as the model for silver castings, and silver shoes for Chi- nese ladies were regular articles of com- merce. But I doubt if a single one of these has ever served the actual purposes of a 74 joim. sliOG, and there is little probability that it ever will. The value of China as a tea-producing country is declining, owing to tlie rivalry of other countries. Japan is a heavy ex- porter of tea, nearly all her product coming to the United States, and making a serious inroad upon the market. India began the tea-culture as an experiment, by which it was hoped to turn a large area of the hill- country to some useful purpose and bring a revenue to the government. There was great difficulty in getting a supply of tea- plants and the necessary workmen to in- struct the Indian natives in preparing the article ; but by steady perseverance all ob- stacles were surmounted, and the experi- ment grew into a successful reality. The English market now derives a large supply of tea from India, and it is steadily growing in liivor. The Dutch government intro- duced the tea-culture into Java, and with great success. The Java teas have become popular in Holland, and a few cargoes of STATISTICS OF CHINESE TRADE. 7o tliem have been sold in England at satis- factory prices. Attempts have been made at cultivating tea in North America, but thus far they have failed. It is easy enough to raise the tea-plant in certain portions of the United States, but the fatal weakness of the scheme is in the cost of labor for manipulating the article and preparing it for market. There is a vast amount of hand-work necessary ; and no American or European country can compete with Asia in the cheapness of labor, nor is likely to do so for a long time to come, America is not destined to be a rival of China as a tea- growing country ; but it is otherwise with Japan, India, and Java. The English are confidently looking forward to the time when they can leave China out in the cold and draw their entire supply of tea from India; and from present indications the date is not very far in the future. Figures are sometimes dry reading, and therefore I give warning at this point that some units and tens are coming. Those 76 joim. wlio don't like them may jump a few para- graplis, and those wlio can stand the inflic- tion may read straight along as though nothing had happened. The Customs De- partment of China has published elaborate and careful statistics of the foreign trade of the country, and from these statistics many interesting facts may be gleaned. The trade of a single port will be sufficient for jDurposes of illustration, and so we will consider that of Shanghai. In 1871, the total foreign imports into Shanghai were valued at 13,245,000 taels (a tael is worth $1.33^), while the native exports to foreign countries for the same year were 10,017,000 taels. In 1872 these figures were 9,003,000 imports and 18,088,000 exports; in 1873 they were respectively 7,500,000 and 19,- 075,000 ; in 1874, 8,202,000 and 15,050,000; in 1875, 10,500,000 and 17,000,000; while in 187G they were 13,000,000, against 25,000,- 000. It will be observed that the balance is largely in favor of Sliaiighai and against the foreigner. In other ports of China, par- STATISTICS OP CHINESE TRADE. 77 ticulrii'ly at Canton and Foochow, the bal- ance against liim is even greater than at Shanghai, and shows no sign of diminish- ing immediately. Twenty years ago there was a much larger balance than at present, and it was no wonder that the native mer- chants grew flit and sleek. Their profits were large, and competition was less active than to-day. The foreign merchant in the China trade was also able to show a hand- some return at the end of each year, and sometimes he made colossal profits on a single operation. Times have changed since then, and the most of the merchants will assure you that the business has flillen into the sere and yellow leaf. England has the largest share of the trade of China; she took the lead when the country was opened to commerce, and has managed to maintain it. The entrances and clearances of British steamers at Shang- hai for a recent year were 1029, and of American ships for the same period 821. (These include the American steamers en- 78 JOHN. gaged in the coasting trade, and also Brit- ish steamers in the same employment.) Of sailing-vessels there were 414 British en- trances and clearances, against 311 Ameri- can ; the totals of steamers and sailing-ves- sels were 1443 British and 1032 American — the former with an aggregate of 1,087,605 tons, and the latter with 697,283 tons. The average tonnage per ship is greater for Brit- ish tlian for American commerce, as one can readily perceive by an analysis of the above figures. In the same year there were 190 German vessels of 109,108 tons, 79 French vessels of 114,173 tons, and 93 Jap- anese of 101,582 tons. The French have the largest average tonnage per vessel: this fact is due to the great size of the mail steamers of the ComjMgnie Messageries Ma- 7'itlmes, which j^erform a fortnightly service each way between Marseilles and Shang- hai. Deduct the 26 entrances and the same number of clearances of these regular steamers, and tlie French aggregate of 79 for the year is reduced to a small figure. i STATISTICS OP CHINESE TRADE. 79 In the same period there were 14 entrances and clearances of Danish vessels, 8 Dutch, 27 Russian, 89 Spanish, 10 iS;"orwegian, 11 Siamese, and 927 Chinese. The figures showing tlie value of the va- rious foreign imports at Shanghai (other than specie) are not especially encouraging to Americans. For the year under consid- eration. Great Britain is put down for 20,- 790,000 taels (I omit the odd thousands) ; India, for 16,613,000; Singapore and the Straits, 518,000; Australia, 488,000 ; Japan, 2,939,000 ; and the United States, 726,000 ! The total of imports is 47,973,000 taels, and there were re-exports to other Chinese ports to the value of 34,908,000 taels, leaving a net value for Shanghai of 13,000,000 taels. Opium stands at the head of the list of for- eign imports, and next to opium we have cotton piece-goods. Opium is not our af- fair, and therefore we will not stop to figure upon it; but we have something to say about articles of cotton manufacture. Of gray shirtings there are 5,360,000 80 JOHN. pieces, and of plain wliite sbirtings 605,000. There are 2,903,000 pieces of T-clotlis, while of drills there are 918,000 pieces of English make, 99,000 Dutch, and 191,000 American. There are 224,000 pieces of English jeans, 27,000 Dutch, and 7000 American. For sheetings the English are credited with 31,000 pieces, and the Amer- icans with 83,000. Other cotton goods are imjDorted, but they are of no sjDccial conse- quence to us, and I omit the figures con- cerning: them. SOMETHING FOR AMERICAN MERCHANTS. 81 VIII. SOMETHING FOR MIERICAN MER- CHANTS. Here is a trade which we should look after more carefully than we have been looking the past few years. Formerly we had our share of it, but it was lost during the American civil war, and has never been regained. There is an old maxim that " all's fair in love and war." That it is a most pernicious one, and has been made the excuse for countless dishonorable actions, I will not stop to prove. Evidently there are many persons who believe that all is fair in commerce, if we may judge by certain trans- actions in the Far East. I have elsewhere alluded to the Opium War and the noble principles upon which England based her conduct in that affair; hardly less dishon- orable has been the course of British mer- 6 82 JOHN. chants in respect to the trade in cotton fabrics in China and Japan. Our war gave them an advantage for the time, and they filled the Eastern markets with their fab- rics. This was all right and proper, but far otherwise was their conduct after our war was over and we again entered the commer- cial field. American goods were popular, and the English dealers found it to their in- terest to put American counterfeits into the Chinese market. They imitated the trade- marks of the American mills, and to all out- ward appearances the goods were the same. But they were heavily weighted with sizing ; and, though of good apiDcarance, they could not endure washing even for a single occa- sion. In this way the American rej^utation was greatly injured; and, furthermore, as the counterfeits were far cheaper than the genuine, the Chinese merchants were led to believe that the English houses could sell American goods cheaper than could the Americans tliemselves. While in China and Japan I examined SOMETIII^'G FOR A3IERICAN MERCn^iNTS. 83 goods of the above description, and had the testimony of merchants, customs offi- cials, and others in support of the assertion concerning the frauds in the trade. Sev- eral years ago the matter ■^'as called to the attention of the Shanghai Chamber of Com- merce, and this led to a quiet investigation of the practices of the English cotton man- ufacturers. It was found that the mills at Manchester (England) were using seven or eight times as much sizing as the American mills, and that a skilled chemist was a nec- essary functionary in a well-conducted Eng- lish factory. The following was the result of washing out the size, etc., from drills : Weight in Weight ^ Loss Per Gray. Washed. ' Loss. Cciit. 15 lbs 9 lbs. 10 oz 5 lbs. 6 oz. . . .or 35.83 14 lbs. 14 oz.... 9 lbs. 6 oz 5 lbs. S oz. ...or 86.97 14 lbs. 4oz....Slbs. 12oz 5 lbs. 8 oz.... or 38.60 151bs. 10OZ....9 lbs. 9 oz Gibs. 1 oz.... or 38.80 15 lbs. 2oz....9 1bs. 5 oz 5 lbs. 13 oz... .or 38.34 15 lbs 12 lbs. 2 oz 2 lbs. 14 oz. . . .or 19.1T —or an average of loss of 34J per cent. A similar fraud was practised on shiit- 84 JOHN. ings; iDieces that weiglied 7^ lbs. being weighted to the extent of three pounds, so as to make them sell at 10^ lbs. Now look at the standing of genuine American cot- tons as compared with the above. Twen- ty-five pieces of American goods were washed with the following result : Weight of 40-yard pieces in brown, as put up for export, 14 lbs. ; weight of same after wash- ing, 13i to 13 1 lbs. ; percentage of loss by washing, 31- to 5 per cent. A comparison of the above statistics, taking English drills per invoices of Janu- ary, 1874 (tlie sterling price reduced to its equivalent in American gold), and Ameri- can drills (the currency price reduced to gold at 12^ per cent, premium), shows the following result : If the English manufact- urer made his drills, as the American, with only 3^ to 5 per cent, (say 5 per cent.) siz- ing, it would increase the price per yard in gold to 11.24 cents, while the price of the American drill on the same basis is 9.33 cents— difference in favor of the American SOMETHING FOE, AMERICAN MERCHANTS. 85 drill, 1.91 cents. Or, again: If the Ameri- can manufacturer should degrade his stand- ard to the English, using 34f-per-cent. siz- ing, the American price would be per yard, gold, 6.54 cents, while tlie English price on the same basis is 7.87 cents — difference in favor of the American drill, 1.33 cents. Since these frauds were first exposed we have regained a little of the China trade in cottons ; but the tricks of the British mer- chants are not generally known, and they still have the lion's share of the business. More persistence on our part is absolutely necessary to secure justice to ourselves and jDrotect the untutored Chinese against im- position. At Canton the trade statistics make a far worse showing for America than at Shang- hai. During one year there were 1749 Brit- ish vessels entered and cleared at Canton, against 97 German and 14 American. But it should be explained that a large number of Chinese loixJias, or small coasting-ships, trade between Hong-Kong and Canton un- 8G JOHX. der British licenses, and tlius the number of British entries and clearances is largely increased. Furthermore, the most of the American ships in the trade of Southern China discharge and load at Hong-Kong and do not enter any strictly Chinese port. But even with all this in consideration, we are far behind what we should be in our commerce with the more southerly portion of the Celestial Empire. STEAM COMMUNICATION WITH CHINA. 87 IX. STEA^l CO^niUNICATION WITH CHINA. Until the year 1867, we had no regular steam communication -svitli China. Our trade was conducted in sailing-ships, and famous were the voyages made in the olden time, when the white-winged clippers flew homeward with their cargoes of tea and silk. Steam is rapidly driving the sailing- ship from the ocean. In her earnest encour- agement of steam-lines in all parts of the world, England has shown far more shrewd- ness than we have. The completion of the Pacific Railway and the establishment of an American steam-line to Japan and Chi- na occurred in the same decade with the opening of the Suez Canal. The routes of commerce with the Far East were thus ma- terially changed both for the Old World and the Kew. Formerly we were obliged 88 JOHN. to send our ships by the way of Cape Horn or the CajDC of Good Hope, and in either case it was necessary to cross the. equator twice, and undergo all the risks and discom- forts of tropical heat. A hundred days and more were required for the voyage from China to New York ; now it may be made in thii'ty days, and even less. We have es- tablished a new route of travel and com- merce, and every year it is growing in poj)- ularity. Merchandise can travel rapidly as well as passengers, and the New-Yorker may sip his morning or evening tea in little more than a month from the day the leaves were plucked from the plants on Chinese hill-sides. There are now two steam -lines, well equipped and well managed, between San Francisco, on the one hand, and China and Japan, on the other. From each end of the line there is a departure every two weeks, and the voyage across the Pacific may be set down as tlie longest and pleasantest in the world. The steamers carry out assort- STEA3I COMMUNICATION -SVITn Cnils'A. 89 ed cargoes of American products, including trade-dollars, quicksilver, cotton goods, ma- chinery, ginseng, weighing apparatus, flour, borax, and other things. They bring in re- turn tea, silk, porcelain, and general mer- chandise, the latter consisting mainly of curiosities from China and Japan. There is always great haste to deliver the new crop of tea, as this article deteriorates rap- idly with age ; and the sooner it can be put in the market, the better it is for the inter- est of all concerned. When a tea-laden steamer arrives at San Francisco, a railway train is drawn up at her side, and the chests are transferred as rapidly as possible from ship to cars. In a few hours the work is complete, and the train whizzes away to the eastward. It has the right of way over everything but a passenger train, and its halts are so arranged as to lose the least possible amount of time. It climbs the Sierras and winds through the snow-sheds ; rattles over the long tangents that stretch like sunbeams across the alkali plains of 00 JOHN. Utah and Nevada; it winds throngli the billowy green caq^et of Weber and Echo canons ; it ascends the long slope of the Eocky Mountains, and halts a moment for breath at the water -shed of the Atlantic and Pacific, more than eight thousand feet above the level of their ever-restless waves. Then down the mountains, and through the broad valley of the Missouri, across the fer- tile prairies of the Mississippi, passing the lakes and crossing the Alleghanies, the train comes at length to the banks of the Hudson, and halts within sight of the spires of New York, only twelve days after it has bidden farewell to the Golden Gate. The two steam-lines traversing the great ocean are known as the Pacific IMail and the Occidental and Oriental. Once on a time they were hostile, but of late years they have been harmonious as two little birds in a correspondingly little nest. They make their departures alternately, and a passage certificate for the one line is good for the other. The ships are thoroughly adajDted to STEAM COMMUXICxVTIOX ^\ITIl CHINA. 91 the service, and altogether we have reason to 1)0 proud of them. I look back with feelings of pleasure to my voyage from San Francisco to China, and unhesitatingly pronounce it one of the most agreeable trips I have ever made on the great water. In a dissertation on China, it may not be out of place to say something about the journey to the Flowery Land. 92 X. A VOYAGE OVER THE PACIFIC. Precisely at noon, the time appointed for our departure, the lines were cast off, and the good shij) Oceanic steamed away from the dock and out into the Bay of San Fran- cisco. On the eastern horizon Monte Dia- bolo smiled a farewell as he reflected the mid-day sun of an unclouded sky ; and be- yond him we could see, in fancy, the snow- clad Sierras stretching their jagged outline to north and south. Westward rose the sand-dunes of the peninsula, disappearing year by year beneath the rapidly growing metropolis of the Pacific coast ; and beyond it lay the great ocean, five thousand miles in width. Our ship turned her prow as we swept through the waters ; the land seemed to l)rcak and the hills to separate, that we might go unrestrained on our way ; and as A VOYAGE OVER THE PACIFIC. 93 M'e swept past the frowning fortress of Alca- traz, and looked beyond, the Golden Gate opened its broad portal and gave us pas- sage to the sea. It is not a narrow, tortuous channel, with rocks and reefs and sand-bars threatening myriad dangers to the naviga- tor, but a wide opening, where a dozen ships may enter side by side. What thousands upon thousands have passed this gateway to enter or to leave the land of gold! What bright hopes have been borne upon these dancing waters, many to be more than real- ized, and many, alas ! to be shattered among the rugged mountains and by the banks of California's turbid streams ! North and south we see a rocky coast- line, which softens and mellows as we leave it tlirther and farther behind us ; here and there along its dark front we see the white stipple made by a farm-house or other hab- itation, and occasionally a sharp cliff stands out more boldly than its fellows. We drop our pilot, the ladder is drawn in, the gang- way is closed, and the last link which bound 94 JOHN. us to America is broken. Before we are fairly outside the lieacllands of San Fran- cisco Bay, tlie steamer lays lier course for Cape King, at the entrance of Jeddo Gulf, five thousand miles away. Not an island, not a rock, not a reef, stands between us and our far-off destination. We are not to be cramped for sea-room. The shore fades, the sun declines in the heavens, and the day and the land disap- Y)esiY together. As the great globe of fire sinks beneath the waves, it is exactly in front of our prow ; the light trembles upon the waters, and a long gleam of shining gold marks the division of sea and sky. Thus day after day we witness the sunset, and seemingly we are no nearer to it at the last than at the first. Not a sail greets our eyes for more than four thousand miles ; we are a speck upon the waste of waters circling round ; and there is nothing to greet our eyes save the billowy blue beneath us, or the azure dome above. As our first morning breaks upon us, it reveals a horizon of waves, A VOYAGE OVER THE PACIFIC. 95 and, scan it closely as we will, we can de- scry naught else. We are " off soundings," as the sailors say, and the ocean presents its bluest of " blue waters," to use again a marine phrase. The depth of the Pacific is not well known, as it has been only slightly sounded, but enough has been ascertained to make us certain that it is no small matter. A verdant passenger is informed that land is not more than two miles away. When he has strained his eyes to the utmost in all directions in the vain endeavor to discover it, he is told that he can find it directly un- der the keek " Don't be too sure of that," lie replies ; " none of us know how deep the Pacific is, and it is just possible that the land you speak of is five or six miles away." We cannot combat his theory, and decline to discuss a subject where neither side has any facts upon which to base an argument. I have spoken of the blue sky ; let it not be supposed that the heavens were at all times clear and unclouded. On the contra- ry, more than three fourths of our voyage 96 JOHN. we have had clouds and fogs in abundance both day and night, and there liave been four or five days at a time when we have not been favored with even the faintest glimpse of the sun. At times the clouds are dull and leaden ; at others they are sombre, and drop down rain; again they come so close that our tall masts can al- most pierce them, while an hour later they rise far above, like a gigantic dome. Now they are light and fleecy, as though the sheep of the celestial regions had cast off their wealth of wool ; and again they form long feathers and bits of sj)ray that stretch above and around us, and make what the sailors call " a mackerel sky." The fog of- ten lies thick around us, but, apart from its humidity, which drives us below, it has no terrors like its Atlantic kindred. A fog on the banks of Newfoundland is an affair of more or less danger ; it conceals icebergs, against which we may be dashed and de- stroyed, and it renders tlie chance of a col- lision with steamers or sailing-craft an easy I A VOYAGE OVER THE PACIFIC. 97 possibility. The history of transatlantic navigation is full of sad incidents whose primal cause was the perpetual fog that liangs over a portion of the great highway. The half-dozen steamers that have disap- l^eared, never to be heard from, doubtless met their fate beneath this pall of descend- ed cloud. But on this broad ocean the fog is of no consequence beyond the trifling one I have mentioned, and its hindrance to so- lar and lunar observations. The currents of the Pacitic are northward, and there is a steady flow of water through Beliring Strait into the Polar Sea. Consequently there are no icebergs to stand in our way, and there is little danger of a collision with another vessel on a route where not a sail is to be seen during the whole voyage. Imag- ine the four Middle States of the Union to be one vast field ; a dozen men walking through it at random would have more chance of running against each other than would the ships navigating the Pacific of coming within speaking and seeing dis- 7 98 JOHN. tancc. The possibilities of collision in the fog are less than those of the earth's de- struction by a comet within the next twen- ty years. The ocean and the sky are an interesting study. On a clear day the water is a deep blue — almost black, indeed, especially when we look down into its depths. But when clouds veil the heavens, the water is blue no longer, or rather its blue seems to be tinged with gray, as though reflecting the color of the dome above it. There is a per- petual variation of light and shade and col- or on the dancing waves ; and sometimes at sunset the western horizon burns and glows like that of Egypt, and the jDurple and yel- low and crimson spread outward and up- ward, and stretch a band of burnished gold along the distant water. Sometimes the sea is of a lake-like stillness, but such occa- sions are rare ; more often it is in motion, now undulating in a long sloAvly pulsating swell, and now broken into wliitc-capped waves that rise and fall with rhythmic reg- A VOYAGE OVER THE PACIFIC. 99 ularity. For us it is not lashed into tempests : our voyage is a summer one, and the monotony has not been varied by a gale. In winter it is otherwise, and the Pacific frequently belies its name by toss- ing the mariner as wildly as he has ever been tossed on the Atlantic. Had Magel- lan sailed in this latitude in December or January, he would have given another name to the sea he christened Peaceful. I said we had no sight of sail; I forget. On two or three occasions we have seen the ocean covered for hours, far as the eye could reach, with the sails of Portuguese men-of-war. Thousands of them have been run down by us, and we made no note of them on our log. Did you know the little kingdom of Portugal possessed such a navy ? and would you suppose that the captain of the Oceanic would so cruelly sink the craft of a jDeaceful nation ? Well, this ship, with such a portentous name, is a ma- rine production of the family of mollusks, combining in some degree the peculiarities 100 JOHN. of snail, jelly-fish, and sail-boat. Below the water be bas a thin shell enclosing a jelly- like body, and above the Avater he carries a thin membrane stretched between two sup- l)orts, and performing the duty of a sail. lie carries no clearance or other papers, and, sjDite of his name, is not under the protec- tion of his Jlost Gracious Majesty the King of Portugal. Consequently there is no dan- ger of international troubles or indirect damages growing out of the destruction which our ship has wrought among these helpless craft. They are of no consequence, as even the sea-birds refuse to eat them, and what a sea-bird will decline to devour may be set down as inedible. The birds follow us all the way from the Golden Gate to the Bay of Jeddo. They can he seen at almost any hour of the day flying gracefully through the air or taking a temporary rest in the .waves behind us. They are on the look- out for edibles from the table, and are not particular whether they come from the cab- in or the steerage. How or when they sleep A VOYAGE OVER THE PACIFIC. 101 is a mystery, as they do not come on board, and the steamer does not wait for them to take " forty winks," or any other number, during the still watches of the night. We march on and on, and the engines do not once stop from the time we leave the Gold- en Gate till we are in sight of Yokohama, eighteen days later. There are several varieties of birds, some little larger than a swallow, while others equal a full-grown duck. One of the little fellows flew on board one day, and was caught. He greatly resembled a young duck, save in the bill, which was shaped like a chicken's. He was placed in a tub of water, where he swam around quite unconcerned, not attempting to fly, and doubtless won- dering what had made the ocean so small in such a little while. After half an hour's confinement he was thrown overboard, where he chattered and shrieked a greet- ing to his comrades, and probably told them of the wonderful tilings he had seen. Our ship is British, officers are mostly so, 102 JOHN. crew is Chinese, and passengers are of va- ried origin. The latter are not numerous — seven in all in the cabin — and they in- clude American, English, French, Japanese, Hindostanee, Spanisli, Clnuese, German, and perhaps one or two other nationalities. You may think the above statement a trifle incorrect, but you would not if you could see how one person represents three coun- tries, and another two at least. The cabin is so large and the number so small that there is no crowding; and though ever}-- body is civil, there is not much chance among so many tastes and languages that we can be congenial. One passenger — he of the three nationalities — is on his way to a fortune. He was born in India, of a mixed parentage, and a decade or so ago he ran away from home. lie went to California, where he landed with a cash capital of forty cents, and for years had a sharp strug- gle witli poverty. On some occasions he went two whole days without food, and for months he lived upon one meal a day, pur- A VOYAGE OYER THE PACIFIC. 103 chased at the low price of ten cents. He struggled bravely, and at last found him- self comfortably off, possessing a small house, a wife, a child, and a permanent situation ]:)riuging him two thousand dollars a year. Several times he wrote home, but as no re- sponse came to his letters he concluded that the paternal wrath had been visited upon him and blotted his name from the fiimily record. He became an American citizen, and ceased to think of India. But one day his brother comes to San Francisco in a ship from Australia, and at a venture he advertises for our polyglot pas- senger. He has done the same in London and Melbourne, in Liverpool and Sydney, in Glasgow and Calcutta, and in a dozen other places, but all to no purjDOse. This time the advertisement falls on good ground, and the brothers meet after a separation of twelve years. " I have souglit you all over the world," says the new-comer. " I have worked my passage from city to city ; and whenever I could make any money, I have 104 JOHN. carefully saved it to sjiend in advertising for you. Our ftither died nine years ago, and left half a million dollars. We never received a letter from you, and had no knowledge of your whereabouts. The es- tate is tied up in the courts, and nothing- could be done till we found wdiere j'ou, the eldest son, lived, if alive, or brought proof of your death. For eight years I have been wandering over the w^orld in search of you, and what a relief it is to find you !" The heir wdio was lost and is found tells me with tears in his eyes of his brother's devotion, and says, " Though I am entitled by the law to the whole estate, I think he deserves a good share, and he shall have the half of every dollar I receive. I will stay in India just long enough to close my affairs, and then I will return to America. It has been kind to me tvhen I was in dis- tress; I have become a citizen and married and settled there, and want no better home." One day is much like another. We rose, A YOYAGE OYER THE PACIFIC, 105 dressed, ate, read, talked, wrote, and slept yesterday, and we rise, dress, eat, read, talk, write, and sleej? to-day. No morning papers, no AA^ar news, and no politics; the story-tellers are soon told out, and the singers soon sing tliemseh'es songless. On Sundays we have service, and afterwards all tlie officers and crew are mustered for inspection. With a force composed partly of English and part- ly of Chinese, the inspection can fairly be called la revue des deux mondes. The fire- men, coal-passers, sailors, Avaiters, etc., are Chinese ; all officers of whatever grade, from the butcher and poultry chief up- Avards, are English or American. I except from this list of officers the boatswain, who is Chinese — a strong, muscular fellow Avith an intelligent face, a bright eye, an ear that understands English, and a mouth that gives orders in Chinese with great rapidity. The sailors are in general athletic fellows, with bronzed flices and strong arms; they are said to be excellent for ordinary M'ork, but unreliable in times of excitement or lOG JOHN. danger. They do not come to service in the cabin, but have a chapel or joss-house of their own, where they worship after the dictates of their consciences or the customs of their fathers. Fire-crackers have a prom- inent phTce among their religious parapher- nalia, and some of their devotional meetings are opened with explosions intended to wake up their deity and secure his atten- tion. Whenever the ship passes the spot ■where tlie Japan was burned and five hun- dred Chinese lost their lives, a special service is held in memory of those whose bones are bleaching beneath the weaves. Quantities of food are thrown overboard for tlie sus- tenance of the unhappy spirits doomed to a subaqueous residence forever. Wlien Chi- nese die at sea, they are not buried in the deep, but their bodies are embalmed and carried to land. The Chinese have a great horror of sepulture elsewhere than in the Flowery Kingdom, and for this rea&on ev- ery Celestial in America lias arranged that, living or dead, he shall not remain among A VOYAGE OVER THE PACIFIC, 107 US. John has his superstitions, as we have ours, and he is the hist man in the world to give them up. On the twentieth day we see the white cone of Fusi-Yama, the sacred mountain of Japan. A few hours hiter we pass Cape King, and enter the Ba}' of Jeddo, wp whicli we steam till we drop anchor in front of Yokohama, five thousand miles from the Golden Gate. From Yokohama the steamer proceeds to Hong-Kong, twelve hundred miles farther, and comxiletes the long voy- 108 JOHN. XI. SIGHTS IN CANTON. At Hong-Kong we are only ninety miles from Canton, the best-known city in Chi- na, for the reason that it has been longest open to the outer world, and has been vis- ited by more travellers than any other. It is generally considered the most attrac- tive and picturesque — an opinion I most heartily endorse. The Cantonese are a gay, cheerful people, and though ever on the look-out for good bargains, they do not act as if the pursuit of gain were tlic sole object of their Fives. In Shanghai and other Northern cities the shopkeepers are often uncivil, and not infrequently make a posi- tive refusal to show their goods unless as- sured that you will be a lona-Jide purchaser, and arc not indulging in a simple " look- see." A Canton shopkeeper does other- SIGHTS IX CANTON. 109 Avise : you may look through his establish- ment and take up an hour or two of his time; and, whether you purchase much, lit- tle, or nothing, he never forgets his polite- ness, and bows you away at your departure with an intimation on his countenance that your visit has given him the greatest possi- ble pleasure, and he regrets its hasty ter- mination. Canton beggars and the Canton jDOor in general seem less unhappy than their brethren of the j^oiih, and even the pigs and the dogs are in better condition, and do not appear to consider life as one of the vanities. Some miles before we reach Canton, as we ascend the Pearl River from Hong-Kong, we see the walls of the city straggling over the hills, and rest our eyes upon tall pago- das which rise like watch-tovrers. Some- how a pagoda seems well adapted to the Chinese landscape — it fits into place exact- ly; but you cannot help thinking how in- congruous it would appear in Europe or America. One of the prettiest in this region 110 JOHN. is the pagoda of Whampoa, about ten miles below Canton ; it is moss and bush grown and ivy-twined, and altogether has an air of antiquity that inclines you to remove your hat as you pass. A famous edifice in Canton is the five -storied pagoda which stands on a hill overlooking the city on one side, and a long stretch of cemeteries and gardens on the other. As a work of architecture this pagoda is a lamentable failure, as it is little else than a huge build- ing five stories in height, and possessing broad balconies at each story. The eleva- tion and the view from the upj^er balcony make the attraction, and certainly the pict- ure is a charming one. The great city with its million inhabitants lies at your feet, and you look down upon acres and acres of houses with tiled roofs and pro- jecting caves, and hear the hum of myriad voices borne on the air like the sigh of the breeze through the forest. The streets are so narrow that you can hardly see them at all, and you might almost think that the SIGHTS IN CA^^TON. Ill area below you was one vast j)avement of earthen tiles. We see pagodas and temples rising like islands from the waters of a lake, but more numerous than these are tall build- ings of brick and stone towering high above their neighbors, and recalling to mind the grain-elevators of Buffalo and Chicago, or the huge warehouses that line the banks of the harbor of New York. " What are those tall buildings ?" we ask ; and though we know we are in a land of surprises, and are prepared to hear every- thing with complacency, we cannot avoid a slight elevation of the eyebrows at the answer to our queiy. " Those tall build- ings are j^awnbroking shops," our guide ex- plains. " In the upper story gold and jew- elry and other costly things are stored ; on the next floor are silks and furs ; and the farther down you go, the cheaper are the articles stored there. The buildings are made high so that thieves cannot get into them." The number and size of these establish- 112 JOHN. ments indicate an enormous business, and we are quite prepared for the statement that the Chinese are liberal patrons of the house of the three balls. In winter a Chi- nese keeps his summer clothes in pawn, and in summer he thus disposes of his winter garments. How he manages the mauvais quart cVJieure of the change of wardrobe, I am unable to say, but it may be that an ar- ray of dressing-rooms in the shop would solve the mystery. I went through one of these shops, and ujd to its roof: thousands uiDon thousands of parcels and packages were stowed away on the various floors, all ticketed and labelled in such a way that any desired package could be readily found. The pawnbrokers may charge three per cent, a month on short loans, and two per cent, on long ones, and altogether they do not appear to drive a losing business. They are as keen as their kindred of Chatham Street or the Bowery. China is the oldest nation of the world, and claims an origin in the mythological epoch, but in all her SIGHTS IN CANTON. 113 history there is no record of a pawnbroker lending more than its vakie upon any arti- cle offered to him. The genius who praised the providence which ordained that great rivers should run past large cities would be delighted with the situation of Canton. The Pearl River is a fine stream, and its numerous branches and tributaries render a large area of coun- try accessible by boats. The largest ocean vessels must anchor at Whampoa, but ships and steamers of medium size may ascend to the city and anchor in front of it. "We arrive by a steamer from Hong-Kong, and as we approach the wharf it seems al- most a miracle that we do not sink a dozen or more of the boats that are thickly dotted upon the water. We think all the boats of Canton must be out for an airing, but as we look along either bank we see rows upon rows of boats of many kinds lying there ; and if we go around the bend and down any of the creeks and canals, we find more boats, and more, and more. Then we re- 8 114 JOHN. member the famous boat population of Can- ton, and that whole flmiilies live, j-ear in and year out, upon the river. As we look into the boats we find the statement veri- fied, as at least half of the rowers are wom- en, and we see children of all ages l^'ing or crawling about the decks, or in little pit- holes at the stern. The smaller children are tended by the larger ones ; and if there are none of the latter, the little ones are se- cured by a cord, whose other end is attached to the boat or to a small log. If the urchin falls overboard, he swims as naturally as a puppy; but I was told that these babies, left to themselves, rarely tumble from the deck or meet other mishaps. They seem to understand that they can receive no at- tention, and therefore do not expect or de- mand it. A boat approaches, rowed by two women, each of whom lias a child strapped to her back. This is the usual mode of carrying infants in China and Ja- pan, and the babies seem to take to it very kindly. SIGHTS IN CANTON. 115 The number of the boat population of Canton is stated at sixty thousand, and I should think the figure an under rather than an over estimate. These j)eoi3le are born on the boats, and they live and die there, and, so far as I could see, they were as happy and careless as any others of the Cantonese. The captain of the steamer secured us a boat belonging to a woman known as "xVmerican Susan," and we en- gaged it for the time of our stay in Canton at fifty cents a day. Susan was a bright and not overhandsome woman, about four feet high, and carried a nose so retrousse that it threatened to pierce the base of her forehead. She was captain, and had a crew consisting of her sister, a hired woman, and a hired man. She spoke English fairly, and admitted the possession of a husband, who "hab got pigeon" (had business) in Canton. The men of the boat population go to serve as sailors in junks or on foreign ships, and many of them have migrated to America and other lands. 116 JOHN. The only hotel at Canton is on the island of Ho-nan, directly o23posite the city, not fav from a lamous Buddhist monastery. We make a visit to this establishment, and find an enclosure of temples and gardens, ap- proached by a massive gateway, which re- minds us of the pylon of an Egyptian tem- ple. The monks are at their evening meal, which consists of rice and fish for the first course, fish and rice for the second course, and bowls of rice wdth bowls of fish for the third course. They appear to live well ; and as there are four hundred of them, the tem- ple must be well endowed, or the visitors very liberal. In one enclosure are the sacred pigs, very lat and very lazj^, but not exhal- ing an odor of sanctity. Close by is an en- closure of sacred ducks, chickens, and doves, but I could not see that they were unlike the profane birds of simihir species in other lands. The monks believe in cremation, and we are shown the ovens where the re- mains of the good men are reduced to ash- es. Nobody was undergoing calcination at SIGHTS IN CANTON. 117 the time, and we contented ourselves with the cold ovens, and the rows of jars con- taining the ashes, which had been careful- ly gathered and labelled like so many pots of preserves. For our visit to the city we engaged se- dan-chairs and a guide, and thus thread the narrow and tortuous ways for which Can- ton is famous. The streets are from four to ten feet in width, and the best of them rarely have a breadth beyond eight feet. Wheeled vehicles are out of the question, and so all merchandise is- carried by coolies, and all people who move otherwise than by pedestrianism. Our bearers walk rapidly, and it is a wonder that no accidents oc- cur, as the streets are full of people, and not infrequently we meet other sedans, and are obliged to hug the wall closely to pass without accident. Over our heads are hun- dreds of peq^endicular signs, on which the shopkeepers inscribe, not only their names, but certain mottoes or phrases by which their establishments are known. One is 118 JOIIK. "Flowery Happiness," another "Ten Thou- sand Pleasures," another " Content and Gratitude," while a fourth bears the legend " Hope is perennial, and promises Paradise." Considerable taste is shown in the painting of the signs, and the view of a Cantonese street is a novel, pleasing, and picturesque sight. The shop fronts are all open, and the merchants sit in calm contemplation, confident that fortune will send them cus- tomers whom they will handle to advan- tage. In the shops we find a temi3ting array of what are known to commerce as Canton goods. Crape and silks are in bewildering profusion, and of a cheapness that makes us wish to purchase the entire lot. Shelves upon shelves are covered with lacquer boxes and other ware, and again we are tempted and turn away sorrowfully. Ivory and san- dal-wood carvings arc abundant, and it is surprising to see what shapes the tusk of the elephant or walrus can be made to take in the hands of the Chinese carver. Most of SIGHTS IN CANTON. 119 US have seen ivory balls one within anoth- er, and have Avondered how the work was done. There is no mystery about it, and we see the balls in the hands of the carvers in nearly every shop we visit. Holes are first bored to the centre of the ball, and the lat- eral cuttings are then made by graduated bits, wdiich require to be held carefully in place. After the innermost ball is separ- ated from the rest of the ivory, it is turned at will, and the design w^rought upon it, and then the next one is taken, and after it the next. Card-cases, fans, and other things are cut with sharjD tools. Sometimes the workman follows a design drawn upon the ivory, and at others he works entirely by the eye. The carvings on sandal-wood are made after the same manner as those upon ivory; but as the material is softer, the work is performed with greater rapidity. We can spend a great deal of time in the shops, and find something new and in- teresting at every step. The dealers arc never weary of exhibiting their wares, as 120 JOHN. tliey have learned by long experience that the best way to tempt customers is by showing their work and allowing the full- est opportunity of examining it. Porcelain shops are numerous, and there is an enor- mous quantity of vases and other articles in each establishment, a large portion be- ing specially designed for foreign tastes. The porcelain shops are generally of two stories, and the best goods are kept on the upper floor, where a customer must go to see them. In Canton one finds that nearly every street has its specialty, one being de- voted to silk-shops, another to ivor}'-work- ers,and another to lacquer-ware or cases of camphor-wood. In this respect the resem- blance to Damascus and Cairo is greater than in any other city of China. We visit several temples, but none have any special attractions. AVe enter a man- darin's court, where a poor wretch led with a chain, as one might lead a dog, is brought up for sentence. As he crouches before the judge he is awarded twenty blows with tlie SIGHTS IN CANTOX. 121 bamboo, and tliey are then and there administered. Instruments of torture are piled at the door of the court-room, and a very brief inspection convinces us that in China the way of the transgressor is hard indeed. But it is wliispered that justice is tempered with mercy when the culprit or his friends can pay for the latter in its un- strained form ; and, meditating on the dif- ference between Chinese customs and our own, we will return to our hotel. FLN'IS. MOTLEY'S HISTORIES. THE DUTCH REPUBLIC. The Kise of the Dutch Republic. A History. By JouN LoTHKOP MoTi.F.y, LL.D., D.CL. With a Por- trait of William of Orange. 3 vols., Svo, Cloth, $10 50 ; Sheep, $12 00 ; Half Calf, $1T 25. THE UNITED NETHERLANDS. History of the United Ketherlands : from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Years' Truce. With a full View of the English -Dutch Struggle against Spain, and of the Origin and Destruction of the Spanish Armada. By John Lotbrop Motley, LL.D., D.CL. Portraits. 4 vols., Svo, Cloth, $14 00; Sheep, $16 00 ; Half Calf, $23 00. JOHN OF BARNEVELD. Life and Death of John of Barueveld, Advocate of Holland. With a View of the Primary Causes and Movements of "The Thirty-Years' War." 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