The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). Frederick Whymper
There, too, are the outcast Veddahs, the real wild men of the woods. With them there is no God—no worship. The Rock Veddahs live in the jungle, follow the chase, sleep in caves or in the woods, eat lizards, and consider roast monkey a prime dish. The Village Veddahs are a shade more civilised.
One reads constantly in the daily journals of the India, China, or Australian Stations, and the reader may think that they are very intelligible titles. He may be surprised to learn that the East India Station not merely includes the ports of India and Ceylon, but the whole Indian Ocean, as far south as Madagascar, and the east coast of Africa, including Zanzibar and Mozambique, where there are dockyards. The China Station includes Japan, Borneo, Sumatra, the Philippine Islands, and the coast of Kamchatka and Eastern Siberia to Bering Sea. The Australian Station includes New Zealand and New Guinea. The leading stations in China are Hong Kong, Canton, and Shanghai. Vessels bound to the port of Canton have to enter the delta of the Pearl River, the area of which is largely occupied with isles and sandbanks. There are some thirty forts on the banks. When the ship has passed the mouth of this embouchure, which forms, in general terms, a kind of triangle, the sides of which are 100 miles each in length, you can proceed either to the island of Hong Kong, an English colony, or to the old Portuguese settlement of Macao.
The name Hong Kong is a corruption of Hiang Kiang,92 which is by interpretation “Scented Stream.” Properly, the designation belongs to a small stream on the southern side of the island, where ships’ boats have long been in the habit of obtaining fine pure water; but now the name is given by foreigners to the whole island. The island is about nine miles in length, and has a very rugged and barren surface, consisting of rocky ranges of hills and mountains, intersected by ravines, through which streams of the purest water flow unceasingly. Victoria, Hong Kong, is the capital of the colony, and the seat of government. It extends for more than three miles east and west, part of the central grounds being occupied by military barracks and hospitals, commissariat buildings, colonial churches, post-office, and harbour-master’s depôt, all of which are overlooked by the Government-house itself, high up on the hill. Close to the sea-beach are the commercial houses, clubs, exchange, and market-places.
It was the shelter, security, and convenience offered by the harbour that induced our Government to select it for a British settlement; it has one of the noblest roadsteads in the world. Before the cession to England in 1841, the native population on the island did not exceed 2,000; now there are 70,000 or 80,000.
Macao (pronounced Macow) is forty miles to the westward of Hong Kong, and an agreeable place as regards its scenery and surroundings, but deficient as regards its harbour accommodation. Dr. Milne, himself a missionary resident for fourteen years in China, says, writing in 1859: “To some of the present generation of English residents in China, there can be anything but associations of a comfortable kind connected with Macao, recollecting as they must the unfriendly policy which the Portuguese on the spot pursued some sixteen or seventeen years since, and the bitterly hostile bearing which the Chinese of the settlement were encouraged to assume towards the ‘red-haired English.’ ”
Macao is a peninsula, eight miles in circuit, stretching out from a large island. The connecting piece of land is a narrow isthmus, which in native topography is called “the stalk of a water-lily.” In 1840 a low wall stretched across this isthmus, the foundation stones of which had been laid about three hundred years ago, with the acknowledged object of limiting the movements of foreigners. This was the notorious “barrier,” which, during the Chinese war of 1840–1, was used to annoy the English. As large numbers of the peasantry had to pass the “barrier gates” with provisions for the mixed population at Macao, it was a frequent manœuvre with the Chinese authorities to stop the market supplies by closing the gate, and setting over it a guard of half-starved and ravenous soldiery.
MACAO.
Leaving Macao for Canton, the ship passes the celebrated “Bogue Forts,” threads her course through a network of islets and mud-banks, and at last drops anchor twelve miles from the city off the island of Whampoa, where the numerous and grotesque junks, “egg boats,” “sampans,” &c., indicate a near approach to an important place. The name Canton is a European corruption of Kwang-tung, the “Broad East.” Among the Chinese it is sometimes described poetically as “the city of the genii,” “the city of grain,” and the “city of rams.” The origin of these terms is thus shown in a native legend. After the foundation of the city, which dates back 2,000 years, five genii, clothed in garments of five different colours, and riding on five rams of different colours, met on the site of Canton. Each of the rams bore in its mouth a stalk of grain having five ears, and presented them to the tenants of the soil, to whom they spake in these words:—
“May famine and death never visit you!”
Upon this the rams were immediately petrified into stone images. There is a “Temple of the Five Rams” close to one of the gates of Canton.
The river scene at Canton is most interesting. It is a floating town of huts built on rafts and on piles, with boats of every conceivable size, shape and use, lashed together. “It is,” says Dr. Milne, “an aquarium of human occupants.” Canton has probably a population of over a million. The entire circuit of city and suburbs cannot be far from ten miles.
Canton was bombarded in 1857–8 by an allied English and French force. Ten days were given to the stubborn Chinese minister, Yeh, to accede to the terms dictated by the Allies, and every means was taken to inform the native population of the real casus belli, and to advise them to remove from the scene of danger. Consul Parkes and Captain Hall were engaged among other colporteurs in the rather dangerous labour of distributing tracts and bills. In one of their rapid descents, Captain Hall caught a mandarin in his chair, not far from the city gate, and pasted him up in it with bills, then starting off the bearers to carry this new advertising van into the city! The Chinese crowd, always alive to a practical joke, roared with laughter. When the truce expired, more than 400 guns and mortars opened fire upon the city, great pains being taken only to injure the city walls, official Chinese residences, and hill forts. Then a force of 3,000 men was landed, and the city was between two fires. The hill-forts were soon taken, and an expedition planned and executed, chiefly to capture the native officials of high rank. Mr. Consul Parkes, with a party, burst into a yamun, an official residence, and in a few seconds Commissioner Yeh was in the hands of the English. An ambitious aide-de-camp of Yeh’s staff protested strongly that the captive was the wrong man, loudly stammering out, “Me Yeh! Me Yeh!” But this attempted deceit was of no avail; the prize was safely bagged, and shortly afterwards the terms of peace were arranged. The loss of life in the assault was not over 140 British and 30 French.
Shanghai is a port which has grown up almost entirely since 1844, the date of its first occupation by foreigners for purposes of commerce. Then there were only forty-four foreign merchant ships, twenty-three foreign residents and families, one consular flag, and two Protestant missionaries. Twelve years later, there were, for six months’ returns, 249 British ships, fifty-seven American, eleven Hamburg, eleven Dutch, nine Swedish, seven Danish, six Spanish, and seven Portuguese, besides those of other nationalities. The returns for the whole year embraced 434 ships of all countries; tea exports, 76,711,659 pounds; silk, 55,537 bales.
Shanghai (“the Upper Sea”) has been written variously Canhay, Changhay, Xanghay, Zonghae, Shanhae, Shanghay, and so forth. Its proper pronunciation is as if the final syllable were “high,” not “hay.”
“Sailing towards the north of China,” says Milne, “keeping perhaps fifty or sixty miles off the coast, as the ship enters the thirtieth parallel, a stranger is startled some fine morning by coming on what looks like a shoal—perhaps a sand-bank, a reef—he knows not what. It is an expanse of coloured water, stretching out as far as the eye can reach, east, north, and west, and entirely distinct from the deep-blue sea which hitherto the vessel had been ploughing. Of course, he finds that it is the ‘Yellow Sea;’ a sea so yellow, turbid, and thick, certainly, that you might think all the pease-soup in creation, and a great deal more, had been emptied into one monster cistern.” The name is therefore appropriate,