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in China the public law be not established of the Jus trium liberorum, by which every Roman citizen having three children was entitled to certain privileges and immunities, yet every male child may be provided for, and receive a stipend from the moment of his birth, by his name being enrolled on the military list. By the equal division of the country into small farms, every peasant has the means of bringing up his family, if drought and inundation do not frustrate his labour; and the pursuits of agriculture are more favourable to health, and consequently to population, than mechanical employments in crowded cities, and large manufactories, where those who are doomed to toil are more liable to become the victims of disease and debauchery, than such as are exposed to the free and open air, and to active and wholesome labour. In China there are few of such manufacturing cities. No great capitals are here employed in any one branch of the arts. In general each labours for himself in his own profession. From the general poverty that prevails among the lower orders of people, the vice of drunkenness is little practised among them. The multitude, from necessity, are temperate in their diet, to the last degree. The climate is moderate; and, except in the northern provinces, where the cold is severe, remarkably uniform; not liable to those sudden and great changes in temperature, which the human constitution is less able to resist than the extremes of heat or cold, when steady and invariable, and from which the inconveniences are, perhaps, no where so severely felt as on our own island. Except the small-pox and contagious diseases that occasionally break out in their confined and crowded cities, they are liable to few epidemical disorders. The still and inanimate kind of life which is led by the women, at the same time that it is supposed to render them prolific, preserves them from accidents that might cause untimely births. Every woman suckles and nurses her own child.

The operation of these and other favourable causes that might be assigned, in a country that has existed under the same form of government, and preserved the same laws and customs for so many ages, must necessarily have created an excess of population unknown in most other parts of the world, where the ravages of war, several times repeated in the course of a century, or internal commotions, or pestilential disease, or the effects of overgrown wealth, sometimes sweep away one

half of a nation within the usual period allotted to the life of

man.

"What a grand and curious spectacle," as Sir George Staunton observes, "is here exhibited to the mind of so large "a proportion of the whole human race, connected together "in one great system of polity, submitting quietly and through "so considerable an extent of country to one great sovereign; "and uniform in their laws, their manners, and their language; "but differing essentially in each of these respects from every "other portion of mankind; and neither desirous of commu"nicating with, nor forming any designs against, the rest of "the world." How strong an instance does China afford of the truth of the observation, that men are more easily governed by opinion than by power.

CHAP. X.

JOURNEY THROUGH THE PROVINCE OF CANTON.-SITUATION OF FOREIGNERS TRADING TO THIS PORT. CONCLUSION.

Visible Change in the Character of the people.-Rugged Mountains.-Collieries.-Temple in a Cavern.-Stone Quarries.-Various Plants for Use and Ornament. Arrive at Canton.-Expense of the Embassy to the Chinese Govern ment. To the British Nation.-Nature and Inconveniences of the Trade to Canton. The Armenian and his Pearl.-Impositions of the Officers of Government instanced.-Principal Cause of them is the Ignorance of the Language. Case of Chinese trading to London-A Chinese killed by a Seaman of His Majesty's Ship Madras.—Delinquent saved from an ignominious Death, by a proper Mode of Communication with the Government.-Conclusion.

WE had no sooner passed the summit of the high mountain Me-lin, and entered the province of Quan-tung, or Canton, than a very sensible difference was perceived in the conduct of the inhabitants. Hitherto the embassy had met with the greatest respect and civility from all classes of the natives, but now even the peasantry ran out of their houses, as we passed, and bawled after us Queitze-fan-quei, which, in their language, are opprobrious and contemptuous expressions, signifying foreign devils, imps; epithets that are bestowed by the enlightened Chinese on all foreigners. It was obvious that the haughty and insolent manner in which all Europeans residing at, or trading to, the port of Canton are treated, had extended itself to the northern frontier of the province, but it had not crossed the mountain Me-lin; the natives of Kiang-see being a quiet, civil, and inoffensive people. In Quan-tung, the farther we advanced, the more rude and insolent they became. A timely rebuke, however, given to the governor of Nau-sheunfoo, by Van-ta-gin, for applying the above-mentioned oppro

brious epithets to the British embassy, had a good effect on the Canton officers, who were now to be our conductors through their province.

This contempt of foreigners is not confined to the upper ranks or men in office, but pervades the very lowest class, who, whilst they make no scruple of entering into the service of foreign merchants residing in the country, and accepting the most menial employments under them, performing the duties of their several offices with diligence, punctuality, and fidelity, affect, at the same time, to despise their employers, and to consider them as placed, in the scale of human beings, many degrees below them. Having one day observed my Chinese servant busily employed in drying a quantity of tea-leaves, that had already been used for breakfast, and of which he had collected several pounds, I inquired what he meant to do with them: he replied, to mix them with other tea and sell them. "And is that the way," said I, "in which you cheat your "own countrymen?" "No," replied he, "my own coun"trymen are too wise to be so easily cheated; but yours are

stupid enough to let us serve you such like tricks; and in"deed," continued he, with the greatest sang-froid imaginable, "any thing you get from us is quite good enough for "you." Affecting to be angry with him, he said, " he meant "for the second sort of Englishmen ;" which is a distinction they give to the Americans.*

The city of Nan-sheun-foo was pleasantly situated on the high bank of the river Pei-kiang-ho. The houses appeared to be very old, the streets narrow, large tracts of ground within the walls unbuilt, others covered with ruins. While the barges were preparing to receive on board the baggage, we took up our lodgings in the public temple, that was dedicated to the memory of Confucius, being, at the same time the college where the students are examined for their different degrees. It consisted of a long dark room, divided by two rows of red pillars into a middle and two side ailes, without furniture, paintings, statues, or ornaments of any kind, except a few paper lanterns suspended between the pillars; the floor was of earth, and entirely broken up: to us it had more the appearance of a

*In the Canton jargon, second chop Englishmen ; and even this distinction the Americans, I understand, have nearly forfeited in the minds

of the Chinese.

large passage or gang-way to some manufactory, as a brewhouse or iron-foundery, than of the hall of Confucius. On each side, and at the farther extremity, were several small apartments, in which we contrived to pass the night.

The barges in which we now embarked were very small, owing to the shallowness of the river. The officers, assembled here from different parts of the country, detained us a whole day, in order to have an opportunity of laying their several complaints before our physician, at the recommendation of Vanta-gin, who had felt the good effects of his practice. Here, for once we had an instance of Chinese pride giving way to selfinterest, and usurped superiority condescending to ask advice of barbarians. We sailed for two days in our little barges, through one of the most wild, mountainous, and barren tracts of country that I ever beheld, abounding more in the sublime and horrible than in the picturesque or the beautiful. The lofty summits of the mountains seemed to touch each other across the river, and at a distance it appeared as if we had to sail through an arched cavern. The massy fragments that had fallen down from time to time, and impeded the navigation, were indications that the passage was not altogether free from danger. Five remarkable points of sand-stone rock, rising in succession above each other with perpendicular faces, seemed as if they had been hewn out of one solid mountain: they were called ou-ma-too, or the five horses' heads. The mountains at a distance, on each side of the river, were covered with pines, the nearer hills with coppice-wood, in which the Camellia prevailed; and in the little glens were clusters of fishermen's huts, surrounded by small plantations of tobacco.

Within the defile of these wild mountains we observed several extensive collieries, which were advantageously worked by driving levels from the river into their sides. The coals brought out of the horizontal adits were immediately lowered from a pier into vessels that were ready to receive and transport them to the potteries of this province, and of Kiang-see. Coal is little used in its raw state, but is first charred in large pits that are dug in the ground. Coal dust, mixed with earth, and formed into square blocks, is frequently used to heat their little stoves, on which they boil their rice.

At the city of Tchao-tchoo-foo, where we arrived on the 13th, we exchanged our flat-bottomed boats for large and commo. dious yachts, the river being here much increased by the con

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