On this occasion I had my first opportunity to appeal to the American flag for protection. As we were passing through a very narrow, but important street, our coolies were suddenly set upon and overturned. We scrambled out of the chairs, and asked what was the matter. We learned that the viceroy was also passing through the thoroughfare, and that everything and everybody had to give way for his retinue. My companions at once stepped out of the way, but my blood was up. I resented being upset in the street, like so much refuse, in order to have the filthy thoroughfare cleared for the passage of a mere Chinese viceroy.
I had a small American flag in my pocket, carefully wrapped about its little staff, and I took it out with a great deal of display and waved the tiny emblem around my head. I dared the Chinese servants of the viceroy to touch me or to interfere with my right to pass through the streets of Fu-chow. This had its effect. I noticed at once that the Chinese in the street, who recognized the colors of the United States, fell back from me, our coolies got up out of the dirt, and once more took hold of the poles of the chairs. The viceroy passed on, pretending not to have noticed the incident, and in a few minutes the way was clear again.
Fu-chow was the black-tea port of China at that time, and it had been opened just two years before. It was astonishing at what a rapid pace business of a certain kind swung along in the coast cities of the Far East. In two years several of the Canton houses, representatives of the great shipping and other business concerns of the world, had opened branch offices in Fu-chow. Commercial life there was intensely active and very prosperous.
From Fu-chow I went on down the coast to Hongkong, this being my second visit there. I noticed at Swatow several ships loaded with Chinese slaves destined for the Chincha guano islands of Peru. My destination was Calcutta, so we did not have much time to explore the Chinese coast, much as I should have liked to do so.
CHAPTER XV
TO INDIA AND THE HOLY LAND
1856
I sailed from Hongkong on Jardine's opium steamer, Fiery Cross. As the course we took had been gone over by me in the voyage to Hongkong from Singapore, I was not especially interested in it until we had passed the Straits and got into Indian waters. The Andaman Islands, where dwells one of the lowest races of mankind, interested me greatly. We saw only a little of these curious people, the Veddahs, but I learned of a very interesting custom followed by the widows of the islands to commemorate their deceased husbands. This consists in wearing the skull of the dead man on the shoulder as a sort of ornament and memento. It is considered a delicate way of perpetuating the memory of the husband.
I had a letter of introduction from Robert Sturgis to George Ashburner, at Calcutta, and the moment I arrived Mr. Ashburner insisted upon my becoming his guest. I spent three days with him, and have never partaken of such luxurious hospitality elsewhere. It is only man in the Orient who knows how to live fast and furious and get every enjoyment out of his little span of life. I was surrounded by a retinue of servants, who stood ready to answer every beck and call. Service in India being highly specialized, there was a servant for everything. I had a little army of fourteen serving men, four of whom carried my chair, or palanquin, with a relay, a man to serve me specially at table, a punka man, and a man for every other detail of living.
There was something to do and to see every moment of the time. I was taken to all the show-places of the city. The first sight shown to me was the famous Black Hole, where John Z. Holwell and one hundred and forty-six men were incarcerated in a dungeon twelve feet square. One can not escape being told the horrible story, if he visits Calcutta, and I suppose that every one hears the narrative with added adornment, after the true Hindu style. The special point of the story that was thrust at me was the orgy and heavy sleep of the rajah, while his servitors were trying to arouse him to answer the screams of the dying men in the Hole. In the morning, after the rajah had had his beauty sleep, he was told of the little difficulty the English had in breathing in the foul and heavy air of the dungeon, and he ordered them released; but death, lingering, and as heavy-handed and heavy-hearted as the brutal prince, had already released most of them.