These facts do not require to be dressed out with words. They are most effective when most baldly stated. I left the execution ground as I left the prison—with the prayer, which has gained a new significance, "For all prisoners and captives we beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord;" but though our hands are nationally clean now as regards the administration of justice and the treatment of criminals, we need not hold them up in holy horror as if the Chinese were guilty above all other men, for the framers of the Litany were familiar with dungeons perhaps worse than the prison of the Naam-Hoi magistrate, and with forms of torture which spared not even women, and the judges' and jailers' palms were intimate with the gold of accused persons. It is simply that heathenism in Canton is practising at this day what Christianity in Europe looked upon with indifference for centuries.
I. L. B.
LETTER V
Portuguese Missionaries—A Chinese Hospital—Chinese
Anaesthetics—Surgery and Medicine—Ventilation and Cleanliness—A
Chinese "Afternoon Tea"—A New Inspiration
HONG KONG, January 10.
The year seems already getting old and frowzy. Under these blue skies, and with all the doors and windows open, I should think it midsummer if I did not look at the calendar. Oh, how I like blue, sunny skies, instead of gray and grim ones, and blazing colors instead of the dismal grays and browns of our nondescript winters!
I left Canton by the Kin-Kiang on Monday, with two thousand Chinese passengers and two Portuguese missionary priests, the latter wearing Chinese costume, and so completely got up as Chinamen that had they not spoken Portuguese their features would not have been sufficient to undeceive me. They were noble-looking men, and bore upon their faces the stamp of consecration to a noble work. On the other steamer, the Tchang, instead of a man with revolvers and a cutlass keeping guard over the steerage grating, a large hose pipe is laid on to each hatch-way, through which, in case of need, boiling water can be sent under strong pressure. Just as we landed here, about five hundred large fishes were passed through a circular net from a well in the steamer into a well in a fishing boat, to which all the fishmongers in Hong Kong immediately resorted.
(I pass over the hospitalities and festivities of Hong Kong, and an afternoon with the Governor in the Victoria Prison, to an interesting visit paid with Mr., now Sir J. Pope Hennessey to the Chinese Hospital.)
We started from Government House, with the Governor, in a chair with six scarlet bearers, attended by some Sikh orderlies in scarlet turbans, for a "State Visit" to the Tung-Wah Hospital, a purely Chinese institution, built some years ago by Chinese merchants, and supported by them at an annual cost of $16,000. In it nothing European, either in the way of drugs or treatment, is tried. There is a dispensary connected with it, where advice is daily given to about a hundred and twenty people; and, though lunacy is rare in China, they are building a lunatic asylum at the back of the hospital.
The Tung-Wah hospital consists of several two-storied buildings of granite, with large windows on each side, and a lofty central building which contains the directors' hall, the accommodation for six resident physicians, and the business offices. The whole is surrounded by a well-kept garden, bounded by a very high wall. We entered by the grand entrance, which has a flagged pavement, each flag consisting of a slab of granite twelve feet long by three broad, and were received at the foot of the grand staircase by the directors and their chairman, the six resident doctors, and Mr. Ng Choy, a rising, Chinese barrister, educated at Lincoln's Inn, who interpreted for us in admirable English. He is the man who goes between the Governor and the Chinese community, and is believed to have more influence with the Governor on all questions which concern Chinamen than anybody else. These gentlemen all wore rich and beautiful dresses of thick ribbed silk and figured brocade, and, unless they were much padded and wadded, they had all attained to a remarkable embonpoint.