Foot-prints of Travel: or, Journeyings in Many Lands. Ballou Maturin MurrayЧитать онлайн книгу.
are abundant and various in size and color. Nine-tenths of the business on the river-front is done by women, and they are very rarely seen without an infant strapped to their backs, while they are carrying heavy burdens in their hands, or are engaged in rowing or sculling their boats. They trade, make change, and clean the fish quite oblivious of the infant at their backs. A transient visitor to China is not competent to speak of the higher class of women, as no access can be had to domestic life. Only those of the common class appear indiscriminately in public, Oriental exclusiveness wrapping itself about the sex here nearly as rigidly as in Egypt. If ladies go abroad at all, it is in curtained palanquins, borne upon men's shoulders, partially visible through a transparent veil of gauze. Anywhere east of Italy woman is either a toy or a slave.
Hong Kong is an island nearly forty miles in circumference, consisting of a cluster of hills rising almost to the dignity of mountains. The gray granite of which the island is mostly composed, furnishes an excellent material for building purposes, and is largely employed for that object, affording a good opportunity for architectural display. A trip of a hundred miles up the Pearl River takes us to Canton, strangest of strange cities. It has a population of a million and a half, and yet there is not a street of over ten feet in width within the walls, horses and wheeled vehicles being unknown. The city extends a distance of five miles along the river, and a hundred thousand people live in boats. At the corners of the streets, niches in the walls of the houses contain idols, before which incense is constantly burning day and night. The most famous temple in the city is that of the Five Hundred Gods, containing that number of gilded statues of Buddhist sages, apostles, and deified warriors. In some of these sacred structures composed of shrines and miniature temples, among other seeming absurdities we see a number of sacred hogs wallowing in their filth. Disgusting as it appears to an intelligent Christian, it has its palliating features. The Parsee worships fire, the Japanese bows before snakes and foxes, the Hindoo deifies cows and monkeys; why, then, should not the Chinese have their swine as objects of veneration? We may destroy the idols, but let us not be too hard upon the idolaters; they do as well as they know. The idol is the measure of the worshipper. The punishment of crime is swift and sure, the number of persons beheaded annually being almost incredible. Friday is the day for clearing the crowded prison at Canton, and it is not uncommon on that occasion to see a dozen criminals beheaded in the prison yard in eight minutes, one sweeping blow of the executioner's sword decapitating each human body as it stands erect and blindfolded.
One is jostled in the narrow ways by staggering coolies with buckets of the vilest contents, and importuned for money by beggars who thrust their deformed limbs in his face. It is but natural to fear contagion of some sort from contact with such creatures, and yet the crowd is so dense that it is impossible to entirely avoid them. Under foot the streets are wet, muddy, and slippery. Why some deadly disease does not break out and sweep away the people is a mystery.
Philanthropic societies are numerous in the cities of China. Indeed, they are hardly excelled by those of America or Europe. They embrace well-organized orphan asylums, institutions for the relief of indigent widows with families, homes for the aged and infirm, public hospitals, and free schools in every district. As is the case with ourselves, some of these are purely governmental charities, while others are supported by liberal endowments left by deceased citizens. There are depots established to dispense medicines among the poor, and others whence clothing is distributed free of cost. It must be remembered that these societies and organizations are not copied from Western models. They have existed here from time immemorial.
No one has ever been able to trace any affinity between the Chinese language and that of any other people, ancient or modern. It is absolutely unique. No other nation except the Japanese has ever borrowed from it, or mingled any of its elements with its own. It must have originated from the untutored efforts of a primitive people. Like the Egyptian tongue, it was at first probably composed of hieroglyphics, expressing ideas by pictured objects, which in the course of time became systematized into letters or signs expressive of sounds and words.
Though we may dislike the Chinese, it is not wise to shut our eyes to facts which have passed into history. They have long been a reading and a cultured people. Five hundred years before the art of printing was known to Europe, books were multiplied by movable types in China. Every province has its separate history in print, and reliable maps of each section of the country are extant. The civil code of laws is annually corrected and published, a certain degree of education is universal, and eight-tenths of the people can read and write. The estimate in which letters are held is shown by the fact that learning forms the very threshold that leads to fame, honor, and official position. The means of internal communication between one part of China and another are scarcely superior to those of Africa. By and by, however, railways will revolutionize this. Gold and silver are found in nearly every province of the Empire, while the central districts contain the largest coal-fields upon the globe. Nearly one-fourth of the human race is supposed to be comprised within the Chinese Empire. They look to the past, not to the future, and the word "progress" has apparently to them no real significance.
In travelling through portions of the country a depressing sense of monotony is the prevailing feeling one experiences, each section is so precisely like another. There is no local individuality. Their veritable records represent this people as far back as the days of Abraham, and, indeed, they antedate that period. In two important discoveries they long preceded Europe; namely, that of the magnetic compass and the use of gunpowder. The knowledge of these was long in travelling westward through the channels of Oriental commerce, by the way of Asia Minor. There are many antagonistic elements to consider in judging of the Chinese. The common people we meet in the ordinary walks of life are far from prepossessing, and are much the same as those who have emigrated to this country. One looks in vain among the smooth chins, shaved heads, and almond eyes of the crowd for signs of intelligence and manliness. There are no tokens of humor or cheerfulness to be seen, but in their place there is plenty of apparent cunning, slyness, and deceit, if there is any truth in physiognomy. With the Japanese the traveller feels himself constantly sympathizing. He goes among them freely, he enters their houses and drinks tea with them; but not so with the Chinese. In place of affiliation we realize a constant sense of repulsion.
We embark at Hong Kong for Singapore by the way of the China Sea and the Gulf of Siam. The northerly wind favors us, causing the ship to rush through the turbulent waters like a race-horse. The Philippine Islands are passed, and leaving Borneo on our port-bow as we draw near to the Equatorial Line, the ship is steered due west for the mouth of the Malacca Straits. Off the Gulf of Siam we are pretty sure to get a view of a water-spout, and it is to be hoped that it may be a goodly distance from us. Atmospheric and ocean currents meet here, from the China Sea northward, from the Malacca Straits south and west, and from the Pacific Ocean eastward, mingling off the Gulf of Siam, and causing, very naturally, a confusion of the elements, resulting sometimes in producing these wind and water phenomena. A water-spout is a miniature cyclone, an eddy of the wind rotating with such velocity as to suck up a column of water from the sea to the height of one or two hundred feet. This column of water appears to be largest at the top and bottom, and contracted in the middle. If it were to fall foul of a ship and break, it would surely wreck and submerge her. Modern science shows that all storms are cyclonic; that is, they are circular eddies of wind of greater or less diameter. The power of these cyclones is more apparent upon the sea than upon the land, where the obstruction is naturally greater. Yet we know how destructive they sometimes prove in our Western States.
Singapore is the chief port of the Malacca Straits, and is an island lying just off the southern point of Asia, thirty miles long and half as wide, containing a population of about a hundred thousand. Here, upon landing, we are surrounded by tropical luxuriance, the palm and cocoanut trees looming above our heads and shading whole groves of bananas. The most precious spices, the richest fruits, the gaudiest feathered birds are found in their native atmosphere. There are plenty of Chinese at Singapore. They dominate the Strait settlements, monopolizing all branches of small trade, while the natives are lazy and listless, true children of the equatorial regions. Is it because Nature is here so bountiful, so lovely, so prolific, that her children are sluggish, dirty, and heedless? It would seem to require a less propitious climate, a sterile soil, and rude surroundings to awaken human energy and to place man at his best. The common people are seen almost naked, and those who wear clothes at all, affect the brightest colors. The jungle is