The Mission to Siam, and Hué the Capital of Cochin China, in the Years 1821-2. Finlayson George
in some degree by the greater or less demand for industry. It must be recollected however, that this emigration is to be considered as temporary, the majority of the Chinese calculating upon returning after a time to their respective provinces. Their wives, – or females of any description, are not permitted to accompany them abroad, to which circumstance it is perhaps chiefly owing, that the Chinese have formed no colonies or settlements; for the establishment of which their situation is peculiarly favourable. Superior in point of civilization, industry, and physical strength to the nations around them, they neither aim at conquest nor power over their weaker neighbours. They are content to be permitted to follow their respective occupations, and are satisfied with the fair returns of their labour. Yet in many of the commercial settlements of the Archipelago, they constitute the majority of the population; whilst in many of the Malay states, their proportion to the latter is so great as three to one, or even more. This is particularly the case in the mining districts of Borneo, as at Sambas, Pontiana, and more particularly in the surrounding country, where it is said that upwards of 30,00 °Chinese are occupied in searching for gold dust. Their masters are here little better than savages; than whom none are more cruel or more despotic. Mild and just laws are unknown to people in this state of society, and therefore cannot be urged as the cause of the unpretending conduct of the Chinese. This instance of general submission to a people so greatly inferior to themselves, stands so much in opposition to the ordinary conduct of man under similar circumstances, that we may be permitted to doubt whether it is to be reckoned a virtue or its opposite in the character of the Chinese; whether as affording a proof of their love of peace and horror of aggression, or rather as a demonstration of unparalleled pusillanimity and the total want of military ardour. Certain it is that the Malays hold them in contempt as opponents. The emigrant Chinese are almost exclusively from the provinces of Canton and Fokien, chiefly from the latter. It is this last also which furnishes the principal maritime population of China. They carry on a considerable commerce in junks throughout the China Seas and Archipelago, from Manilla to Penang, the boundaries of their maritime excursions on the east and west. Nothing can be conceived more rude, awkward, and unmanageable, than the vessels they navigate, called junks; except indeed we bring into the comparison their great ignorance of the science of navigation. A Chinese junk gives no bad idea of what one might suppose the ark to have been. She resembles more an oblong substantial wooden house than a ship. In maritime affairs, the Chinese appear to have derived little or rather no benefit from their intercourse with Europeans. The immutable laws of the Celestial Empire forbid alteration: yet these laws could never have checked improvement for so many centuries; and we find that all vessels built by the Chinese, in the dominions of foreign powers, as at Siam, Cambodia, &c., as well as in their own country, are invariably of this form. The Malay race on the contrary, eagerly adopt improvements. We may observe a marked superiority in the naval architecture of the Buggis people for instance, a superiority which is daily increasing, in proportion as they become better acquainted with Europeans.
The junks which visited Singapore during our stay there, were from Canton Amoy, Cochin China, and the islands to the east. The larger vessels carried from two to three hundred tons burden. They had neither chart nor book of any description on board, nor any written document to point out their route. They had no means even of ascertaining the ship’s way, neither did it appear that they kept any account of transactions on board. They had a rude compass, set in a wooden frame, and divided into twenty-four points, which they did not appear to put great dependence on, and this was probably the only nautical instrument on board. Their mode of proceeding, is to set out with the favourable monsoon. After reaching a certain point without losing sight of land, they stand across the China Sea, calculating that they will, as they generally do, reach the opposite side in ten or twelve days. They make but one voyage across the China Sea in a year; on their return, they sometimes make a short coasting voyage in addition, after which the junk is hauled up, covered with straw, and laid aside till the following season. The owner generally voyages in his own junk, but does not always navigate it, another individual attending to that duty. The crew have a share in the cargo.
Their provision consists of pork, fowls, rice, and abundant store of pickled greens in large tubs; the latter strongly reminds one of the sour crout of the northern nations of Europe, from which it probably differs but little. Tea is their favourite beverage; they use it at all hours of the day, making it in small quantities at a time; their cups contain little more than two or three drachms.
In a small recess in the poop, there is always to be found a sort of temple, ornamented with shreds of gold-leaf, or painted paper, and containing three or four small images of porcelain or wood, dressed in a tawdry and clumsy manner. These are regarded as tutelary deities, to whom offerings of meat, rice, &c., are daily made. Their attributes, as far as we could comprehend their nature, seemed to be analogous to those of the Grecian deities that directed the winds and the rains.
Similar temples are to be seen in all the houses of the Chinese.
Inferior to these in the knowledge of all the arts of civilized life, as well as in industry, stature, strength, and general appearance; but their superiors in point of courage and military enterprise, and above all in the possession of an ardent mind and exalted imagination, stand the Malays, a race of people whose origin, still involved in obscurity, would seem to be of no remote date. The most favoured of their tribes, have as yet made but little progress in civilization, whilst the majority would appear to be enthusiastically attached to the unrestrained condition of savage life. The Malays constitute the principal maritime population of the Archipelago and neighbouring continent, in the different settlements of which they present themselves to the traveller under very different aspects. They are by nature less adapted to commercial pursuits than the Chinese, or the Chuliahs, or other natives of India, and are therefore easily beaten out of the field by them at the stations frequented by Europeans. They are passionately attached to a sea-faring life, and their principal occupation is that of fishing.
Bold and enterprising in their maritime excursions, they hold the peaceful arts of civilized life almost in contempt. Negligent, slothful, and listless in their moments of ease, they display in the hour of danger and of enterprise, the most daring courage and intrepidity. They enjoy neither the good nor ills of life with the calm sobriety and moderation of other men. In action fierce, cruel, and immoderate, their leisure is passed in a sleepy indifference that approaches to the apathy of brute life.
Their character for treachery, though founded in truth, appears to be much exaggerated. This vice would appear to attach more to the state of society in which they are found to exist, than to any inherent propensity towards it in Malays generally. It must be confessed, however, that many of their practices are shocking to humanity. Their laws regarding the right acquired over property and persons falling into their hands at sea, by shipwreck or otherwise, shew them to be possessed of as little of the milk of human kindness as any other description of Asiatics4.
The condition of the lower class of Malays in these parts, is wretched beyond what we should conceive to be the lot of humanity in an intertropical climate; almost the whole of their life is spent upon the water, in a wretched little canoe, in which they can scarce stretch themselves for repose. A man and his wife, and one or two children are usually found in these miserable sampans. For subsistence, they depend upon their success in fishing. They have all the thoughtlessness of to-morrow that characterizes savage life. Their tackling is so rude and scanty, that they are often reduced to the most urgent want. When they have made a meal, they lay basking in the sun, or repose under the dense shade of the mangrove, till hunger again calls them into action. They have scarce a rag of cloth to secure them from the scorching noon-day sun, or to shelter them from the damp and noisome dews and exhalations of night. Their women are not less dexterous than the men in managing their boats. Their only furniture consists of one or two cooking pots, an earthen jar and a mat made of leaves of the Pandanus lævis, which serves to protect them from the rain.
In the numerous bays, inlets, and creeks, that surround Singapore, an inconceivable number of families live in this wretched manner, who have never possessed a house nor any sort of abode on the land. They are constantly roving about from place to place in pursuit of fish. What they have succeeded in taking more than is required for immediate use, they dispose of to the fixed inhabitants, taking rice, sago, betel, and cloth, in return. We are struck with the analogy between
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