Passing the junks at night, a strange spectacle may be observed. Amid the beating [pg 148]of gongs, jangling of bells, and discordant shouts, the nightly religious ceremonies of the sailors are performed. Lanterns are swinging, torches flaring, and gilt paper burning, while quantities of food are scattered in the sea as an offering of their worship. Many of those junks, could they but speak, might reveal a story, gentle reader—
“A tale unfold, whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul.”
JUNKS IN A CHINESE HARBOUR.
The chief trade of not a few has been, and still is, the traffic of human freight; and it is, unfortunately, only too lucrative. Large numbers of junks leave China for the islands annually packed with men, picked up, impressed, or lured on board, and kept there till the gambier and pepper planters purchase them, and hurry them off to the interior. It is not so much that they usually have to complain of cruelty, or even an unreasonably long term of servitude; their real danger is in the overcrowding of the vessels that bring them. The men cost nothing, except a meagre allowance of rice, and the more the shipper can crowd into his vessel the greater must be his profit. “It would,” says the writer just quoted, “be a better speculation for the trader whose junk could only carry properly 300 men, to take on board 600 men, and lose 250 on the way down, than it would be for him to start with his legitimate number, and land them all safely; for in the first case, he would bring 350 men to market, and in the other only 300. That this process of reasoning is actually put in practice by the Chinese, there was not long ago ample and very mournful evidence to prove. Two of these junks had arrived in the harbour of Singapore, and had remained unnoticed for about a week, during which the owners had bargained for the engagement of most of their cargo. At this time two dead bodies [pg 149]were found floating in the harbour; an inquest was held, and it then transpired that one of these two junks on the way down from China had lost 250 men out of 600, and the other 200 out of 400.”
ISLANDS IN THE STRAITS OF MALACCA.
The Malay prahus are the craft of the inhabitants of the straits, and are something like the Chinese junks, though never so large as the largest of the latter, rarely exceeding fifty or sixty tons burden. They have one mast, a tripod made of three bamboos, two or three feet apart at the deck, and tapering up to a point at the top. Across two of the bamboos smaller pieces of the same wood are lashed, making the mast thus act as a shroud or ladder also. They carry a large lug-sail of coarse grass-cloth, having a yard both at top and bottom. The curious part of them is the top hamper about the stem. With the deck three feet out of the water forward, the top of the housing is fifteen or more feet high. They are steered with two rudders, one on either quarter. In addition to the ships and native craft, are hundreds of small boats of all descriptions constantly moving about with fruits, provisions, birds, monkeys, shells, and corals for sale. The sailor [pg 150]has a splendid chance of securing, on merely nominal terms, the inevitable parrot, a funny little Jocko, or some lovely corals, of all hues, green, purple, pink, mauve, blue, and in shape often resembling flowers and shrubbery. A whole boat-load of the latter may be obtained for a dollar and a half or a couple of dollars.
