The consul smiled. "To protect your interests and those, commercial and otherwise, of every English citizen resident here."
"Who is that Jui-Lin of whom you have a picture? and is he alive now?"
"He died a few years ago, and was viceroy of Canton. He made so good a governor that those provinces over which he ruled generally prospered under his administration. It is in a great measure through his influence that peaceable relations have, for some time, been established between China and foreign countries. The Emperor Tau-Kwang, who came to the throne in 1820, thought so well of him that he made him one of his ministers. Later he became general of the Tartar garrison at Canton, and soon after he was made viceroy. He established order in a very troublesome district, where he made the clan villagers at last acknowledge some authority, and so put the people and their property in much greater security."
JUI-LIN, LATE VICEROY OF CANTON.
Leonard said Canton was the place for him, for here he saw ships and fishing to perfection. In Canton alone, the consul told him, it was estimated that 300,000 persons had their homes on the water. One Canton boat-woman, in whose passenger-boat they travelled, said that her husband went on shore during the day to work, whilst she looked after the passengers; but he seemed to be rather an exception, for most of the boat population never went on shore at all, and as people on land go to market to buy vegetables and other food, so everything in this line, that they required, was brought, by boat, to them. Then, besides boats, there were floating islands, on which people lived, and these consisted of rafts of bamboos fastened together, with a thick bed of vegetable soil covering the rafts. Here the owners set up houses, cultivated rice-fields, and kept tame cattle and hogs. Swallows and pigeons here built their nests in pretty surrounding gardens. Sails were put up on the houses, and oars were often used to propel the islands along. Women worked them frequently, with their babies fastened to their backs; and little boys and girls would here also play together, having smaller brothers and sisters thus attached to them. These floating islands, Sybil and Leonard were told, were to be seen on almost all Chinese lakes. Many floating houses were moored to one another.
Sometimes the boat population made such a noise. They seemed a good-natured set of people, but every now and then they quarrelled, and this was done very noisily. Then if a storm came on, they would call out with fear. Those people who lived in river streets, where their houses were close against the river, often complained of the noise that they heard during the night. The boat population are often looked down upon by the Chinese who live on land, and may not go in for the literary examinations.
There were very many fishing villages about, and nothing made Leonard happier than to be taken to one or another of them; he was so fond of boats of all kinds. Fishing-boats in China had to obtain a license from Government. Some of these sailed two and two abreast, at a distance, from one another, of about three hundred feet, when a net was stretched from ship to ship to enclose the fish. Names cut in the boats had generally reference to good fortune. The name on one, which Leonard had interpreted for him, was "Good Success."
CHINESE BOAT-WOMAN.