On the 19th of December we stood up the river with the Hon. Humphrey Marshall, United States commissioner to China, on board, who was going to take possession of his residence at Canton. We reached Whampoa at three o’clock, and found there the British war-steamer Rattler, that had not long before taken an active part in the capture of Rangoon. Her officers had many a kriss and spear trophy of the enemy, and around her engines were well-cut Buddhist idols in marble, which they had brought away with them.
The next day the commissioner left for Canton, and beside receiving his salute of seventeen guns, was accompanied in barges by a suite of officers, an escort of marines, and a band of music—a “grand function” accompanying the movements of prominent foreign personages, always has a great effect with the impressionable Celestials. The American shipping in the Reach fired a number of guns as Mr. Marshall passed up, and dipped their colors. The party accompanying remained in the city some days; I availed myself of the opportunity of making the circuit of the walls, and in company with the chaplain of the ship and a messmate, we started in the morning, Rev. S. W. Bonney, a resident missionary, most kindly acting as conductor. He has been in China eight years and speaks the language. To take the tramp considerable perseverance is necessary. You have to thread your way through streets so narrow, that at times you can easily touch the houses on either side by extending your hands, down into which the sun never comes, densely packed with human beings, and over granite flagging, for ever kept muddy by the innumerable feet in motion over them from day-dawn to midnight. Then you must keep on the alert and quickly step aside to the sill of some shopdoor, or you may be run into by one of the thousand porters—the sole conveyances of Chinese cities—whose short grunt in your rear, as he toddles beneath the burden suspended from the bamboo-pole on his shoulder, warns you to get out of his way; or perhaps you may get a punch in the rear from the ferruled shalves of some high functionary or rich merchant’s sedan-chair, as they rest on the shoulders of the coolies, who carry him along at a dog-trot. On our route we stopped in a number of shops. In one there was seated an Albino-Chinese, seventy-five years old. A rat-merchant informed us that his stock on hand was rather light now, but would be larger in a day or two; while in a turning-establishment, we were shown the Chinese lathe which only turns half way. The perpendicular red and gilded signs to the shops were read to us; such as “May the customers come from the west, like clouds, and when they have purchased, may those from the east come.” We visited a kind of aceldama—the Quan-tung province execution ground—a filthy triangular square in the lower part of the suburbs, running to the river; the place was repulsive in the extreme. On a cross, suspended so that his feet just cleared the ground, had been strangled a culprit, above his head an inscription telling the offence for which he had suffered; while under a shed, near by, was a pile of heads, their long queus matted in blood. The executions by decapitation, during our stay, were very numerous; fifty-nine were to be executed the next day. The culprits are made to kneel, a man stands behind them and raises both of their arms backward, as you would a pump-handle, which brings the neck comparatively horizontal, when one blow from the cleaver-like sword of the practised executioner, severs the head from the trunk. A woman who had killed her liege lord was to be cut to pieces. The laws of China are very severe in the punishment of female offenders—“Women’s Rights” are below par—and it is a land which would not be adapted for the residence of the “strong-minded” women of our own country, Chinese prophecy having foretold the downfall of their empire by the machinations of women.
We passed through one corner of the city proper, which, though permitted by treaties, is still a risky business. We were quick in our movements and were scarcely observed by the Tartar soldier on the look-out for rebels. This gave us an opportunity of seeing the thickness of the wall. We went in at the gate of the “Rising Sun,” crossed a small hypotenuse, and came out at the gate of the “Tranquil Ocean.”
We next emerged into an open space on the north side of the city, used for drilling their soldiers, and where archery is practised on horseback at full speed, the most successful shot having as his prize, his name recorded in a temple near by. We crossed the place with a number of boys crying after us as we walked, “Fanqui! Fanqui!” (foreign devil), and passed under a recent triumphal arch of granite, erected by subscription and by imperial permission. The inscription would be news to the English: it told in grandiloquent terms, how the outside barbarians during the war, were repulsed by Chinese valor from their walls. Not far from here we stopped at a refreshment-house, and got tea and sweetmeats. Here, as at every other point, if we stopped for a moment, a crowd collected around. One would hold up an infantile “pig-tail” to the window, that he might see the “outside barbarian” inside, eat; while an old fellow created considerable laughter by pointing to my mustache—the wearing of the mustache among the Chinese indicating a grandfather. There not being any house for some distance, we walked close under the walls for some time. They were quite high, built of stone, capped with brick, almost covered with creepers and vines, and had at intervals projecting angles for look-out purposes.
We were now out of the suburbs, having on our left a valley shaded with the bamboo and banyan, and containing granite vat-shaped wells, from which the water was being continually carried within the walls. We ascended a high hill on which a number of goats were browsing, and seated ourselves on the steps of a fort. This place was captured by the English after much difficulty, being compelled to drag their guns a long distance from the river, over rice-fields; and here it was that, after getting possession, they got the mortifying intelligence that the commodore had granted a truce. The inscription on the gateway told how it had been placed there to guard the city, and to watch those who came to plunder. From here you could see over the walls, and look down upon the city within, the houses of which did not appear more numerous than outside; and we could discern the consular-flags at the hongs, that we had left some hours before, in the extreme distance to the east.
It is almost to be regretted that the English should have consented to treat with the enemy, and given up this fort, when they had the whole city at their feet, and could have given these treacherous, malignant, cruel, dictatorial, self-conceited, vain people, a lesson in enlightenment, which would have lasted them a long time, and procured a little more deference for the “rest of mankind.”
Descending from here we had a sight of an old mosque, and also of a dead-house, where the Chinese frequently allow their deceased relatives to remain for six months at a time, until their bonzes shall designate some lucky spot in which, in their trunk-of-tree-looking coffin, they may be buried. In a hill-side cemetery we saw persons worshipping at the tombs of their relatives, and burning joss-paper; also noticed a Chinese funeral, the mourners in white. We returned by the western suburbs, and after stopping a while to take a look at the oil-mongers’ hall—each calling in Canton having a similar building—a kind of ’change, we elbowed our way to the hongs which we reached about three o’clock, having left them at ten in the morning, during the whole of which time, Mr. Bonney, while very polite in his attentions and explanations to us, like one properly imbued with the spirit of his mission, as he is, distributed his “Yesoo” or Christian tracts to those whom he would first ascertain, could read them in Chinese, being nearly the only medium by which it may be hoped to introduce Christianity into that country.
A jaunt around the walls of Canton one is glad to have taken; you are subjected to annoyances and names, if not violence. Some called after us, “Kill them as the brute,” and others made sign of throat-cutting, mostly young people, who were reproved by Mr. Bonney in their language, still it was best to keep on at a brisk pace, and obey fully the injunction given to Lot’s wife. This was discreet. We escaped a shower of the missiles with which those who adventure the tramp are sometimes saluted; two only being thrown at us, one, not very large, taking me back of the neck, and the other falling between one of my companions and myself.
In the evening we crossed the river and paid a visit to the pagan temple of Honan, that large structure, where the disciples of Buddha worship him with his three faces, representing the past, present, and future. The buildings of this temple cover a space of thirty-five acres, and an orange-garden, and place for burying the deceased priests and the wealthy dead, fifteen acres more. The main building, whose approach is under a noble growth of banyan-trees, is over, one hundred feet square, filled with colossal demon images of wood and gilt, who keep off evil spirits, together with twenty-four gods of pity. The number of priests is between one and two hundred, all eating at the same table, though vegetables and rice supply the place of black broth. Then they show their porcine affinity; having there the sacred pigs—so fat that their eyes may not be seen, and who are fattened till they die. The time of our visit was after sundown. We visited the apartments of the abbot of the establishment, who was evidently just recovering from the effects of opium. This old fellow, once almost felt persuaded to become a Christian; that is, he almost made up his mind to come to the Christian country of the United States, but his infirmity and the dislike to leave a certain support for the balance of his days, prevented it. To say that he would have been willing to change his creed, would be almost a negation of terms. What religious creed has a Chinaman? If any, it is a bundle of negatives. He thinks nothing in such a connection: he believes nothing. How can you change him from a position, when you do not know where he stands? how can you change his belief when he has none? You had as well beat the air.
This old abbot desired Mr. Bonney to tell us that there was a Chinese lady who had reached Canton from Peking, who was desirous of uniting her fortunes for the balance of her days to a foreigner: her feet were only some two and a half inches long. We desired him to be informed that it “Was not at all in our way.”