We received almost daily rumors of contemplated attacks upon the hongs. The latter part of August, the English brig-of-war “Lily” (painted?) passed up the river to Canton, being of light draft. In the event of troubles, the custody of specie and silver-plate on board of these vessels, pays a handsome percentage to the commander. A survey of the Macao passage of the river was made with the hope that our steamer might be gotten up to Canton, but the collection of a bar at a barrier which had been made in the river during the war, by the Chinese, made the water too shoal to attempt it. We sent up a body of marines, and howitzers in the storeship Supply, which vessel lay for a long time off the city. The imperial authorities at the city were much excited; fleets of war-junks passed up and down the river in search of undiscoverable foes; and the governor of the city recommended to his pig-tail community not to celebrate the “Feast of the Lanterns,” as it might give the rebels an opportunity for outbreak, and also notified that in the event of an attack, it must be a sauve qui peut business with them, as he could not extend them protection.
Meanwhile the officers of the ship, in an armed fast-boat, paid frequent visits to the city; at times for visits merely and purchases, and at others, when emergency seemed to require, with armed cutters and howitzers. The objects on the route all became familiar, as if going up and down one of our own rivers—the pagodas, the water-side joss-houses—the rows of the plantain-trees skirting the fields, and the big-sailed craft going lazily along in the mud canals that intersected them. We soon came and went through the huge water-craft moored head and stern in the approach to the city, and through the lanes of the innumerable small boats, with their three hundred thousand water population, or noticed the small ferryboats, in which, at the fourth of a cent each, thirty thousand people cross and re-cross daily, without interest almost. You might stroll the streets beyond the walls, and purchase the curiously-carved ivory and the many elegant and ingeniously-made articles of China, but the shopkeeper was in considerable trepidation and would speculate much on the “too muchee bobbery,” as he called the anticipated fighting.
I was there during the feast of the Lanterns. In going out from the solitary hotel, kept by Acow—compradore of one of our former commissioners to China, from whom, I suppose, he learned the little English he knew—you generally, through the volunteer aid of the Jemmy-Twitcher Mongols, immediately part with your kerchief and gloves, and it is no matter that you saw the celestial who took them, for if he once mixes with the crowd you could no more undertake to individualize him than you would be able to tell a particular spoke in a revolving-wheel. By you, passes a fellow with as much timber locked around his neck, for some offence, as a mortar-board would contain. Of the innumerable gongs beating, one struck at intervals attracts your attention. The fellow who strikes it is walking the street in front of a bare-backed malefactor, whose queue is wrapped around his head, and whose hands are tied behind him. As he walks, at each tap of the gong from the man in front, a following attendant lashes him with split ratan. It would take too long to enumerate the scenes witnessed in a Chinese street. During the day the bonzes marched through the streets attired in their yellow robes, stopping at intervals to chin-chin joss, by beating on gongs. At night tall prosceniums and staging are erected at the entrances of streets, just inside of their gates, and extending up as high as the roofs of the houses. These are most gorgeously and grotesquely decorated, and lit up with large fantastic lanterns and small lamps, looking like hundreds of illuminated lemons; adown either side of the streets are hung other lanterns in front of each store-door. The expense of all this, and the compensation of the performers, who represent the “sing-song” on the stage, and go on with their horrible caterwauling to the great delight of the throng in the narrow street below, is paid by subscription from the occupants of the street. An old Chinaman, of whom we purchased chess-men, advised us not to be away from our hotel too long, as there were many “two facee—no good pigeon-men”—in the crowd, who had no love for foreigners.
At the time of this visit, I saw many of the celebrities about Canton; the remarkable and magnificent gardens of the old China millionaire Howqua, where artificial landscapes, cascades, and plants, trained in the exact image of all kinds of animals, are to be seen in perfection; old Curiosity street, with its costly jade-stone spectacles, &c., and by accident, the spot, where some young Englishmen, captured during the war, were taken to, and beheaded by the Chinese.
The last of September, we were relieved by the arrival of the Susquehanna, when we ran down the river to Cum-sing-moon. As we approached the anchorage, we discovered the storeship Southampton, not long from Valparaiso. When she was about a thousand miles from Luzon, she picked up a boat, containing three men and a boy. When brought aboard, their long, black hair, high cheek-bones, and dusky complexion indicated a Malayan origin. All they could say was “Sallie Baboo” and they were most likely driven out to sea, from the group of that name, while passing with vegetables in their frail shallop, between the islands. A building having been rented at Macao, as an hospital for the sick and infirm of our squadron, the Sallie Baboos were kept ashore there for some time. The boy, about twelve years old, evinced some sprightliness, and got hold of some sentences in English, but the confidence to speak a single word in our language, was a plant of the slowest possible growth with the older ones.
We found the Powhatan and Macedonian at anchor in the harbor. They had been laying there for exercise in target-firing and in squadron boat-sailing. Unfortunately one of the officers of the Powhatan—Lieutenant Adams, from exposure to the intense heat of the sun, while engaged in the latter duty—was taken very ill, and a very few days after our arrival, our ship performed the melancholy office of conveying his remains to Macao for interment. On our arrival in the roads at that place, we found there the French surveying-frigate Constantine, who, upon seeing our colors half-mast, in compliment half-masted her own. The day of interment the weather was so rough, that a Portuguese lorcha had to be employed to take the body and its escort to the shore. His remains were followed to the grave by his messmates, the officers of the French ship, those of the Portuguese garrison ashore, and proper escort of marines with ship’s band. He was buried in a beautiful spot in the English cemetry, adjoining the garden “Ubi Camoens opus egregium compossuisse fertur,” and by the side of a brother-officer—Lieutenant Campbell, of the United States schooner Enterprise, and the grave of Edmond Roberts, special diplomatic agent of the United States to several Asiatic courts, who died in the East in 1836.
October the 31st, the Mississippi returned to Cumsing-moon, which in the celestial dialect means, “Golden-sun-born-pass,” but the man who could so call it, must be
“—— of imagination all compact:
See Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt!”
The most naked, barren, desolate prospect; a partly-cultivated island, between which and the main-land, the muddy river sweeps in a current—and a collection of Chinese hovels, which form nests for the river-pirates, who rob fast and post boats on their way to Canton and levy on the fortunes of the fishermen, compose the attractive picture, which the Golden-sun-born-pass presents.