himself has a well-selected, valuable, and extensive library of rare Chinese works on geography, natural science, history, philology, and numismatics, and presented a number of valuable gifts to the Expedition. One of his colleagues, Dr. Ph. Winnes, also a German, and a missionary from the Mission Society of Bâle, compiled for us a list of words of the Hakka dialect, as spoken in the interior of the province of Quang-Tung, hitherto so little known philologically. It is indeed astonishing what English, and German, and American missionaries have effected as publicists, during the short period they have been resident here. The educational and religious works published in Chinese at the expense of the various religious societies form already quite a respectable literature of themselves, although the Chinese language puts as many obstacles in the way of mere Christian civilization as in that of the propagation of the Evangile itself. Most of the missionaries consider any attempt to substitute Romish for Chinese characters as being quite vain. The indistinctness of Chinese signs has already been fruitful of much controversy among the missionaries themselves. Thus, for example, those engaged in promulgating the Christian faith are not as yet agreed by what Chinese word the God of Christianity may best be indicated. The Roman Catholic missionaries write Tientschù (the Highest of all things); the English and German Protestants use the sign Schang-Ti (the Most High); the American Protestants make use of the word Schin (Spirit). These varieties of opinion as to the mode of
expressing the idea of "God," have given rise to a vast number of publications, which however have unfortunately tended rather to envenom the dispute than smooth the way to a common understanding.
Conspicuous, however, as are the services of the missionaries in the publication and diffusion of useful and moral books in the Chinese language, their direct efforts have, on the other hand, been attended with but limited results hitherto, and although it is always laid down as an axiom in the books and manifestoes of the Tai-Ping insurgents, that the doctrines of Christianity, as deduced from the writings of the Missionary Societies, are the leading principle of the movement, yet, as set forth and promulgated by the insurgent chiefs, they cannot be said to deserve recognition by any known form of Christianity.
As in their religion, so in their mode of life, and their national customs, the Chinese remain stiff-necked and obstinate, and in this direction also Christianity is in but few cases capable of mitigating their frequently barbarous customs. Children in China are constantly exposed in large numbers, and that not owing to poverty, but from indifference to the female children. One Chinese woman who at present professes Christianity, and is a member of the Bâle missionary community, has herself killed eight female children whom she had herself carried in her womb! Dr. Lobscheid informed us that he was personally cognizant of
one case, where a Chinese mother-in-law, irritated at the birth of a female child, murdered it before its mother's eyes, almost immediately after it had come into the world, and this in a rather well-to-do family! Young mothers often lay their children down in the open field, or on the sea-beach, watching anxiously if any one takes it away, or till a wave mercifully sweeps it off. One such infant, accidentally found by some of the crew of the English frigate Nankin, and tended with all the tender-heartedness of Jack when he finds an object of compassion, is at present in the German Mission House at Hong-kong, and was baptized in the cathedral by the chaplain of the frigate, who gave her the name of Victoria Nankin. Other mothers endeavour to choke the new-born girl with moistened ashes, which, not unfrequently with caressing hand, they lay upon the mouth of the little unconscious innocent. Male children, on the other hand, even such as are crippled or deformed, are very seldom, indeed quite exceptionally, exposed or put to death. In proportion to the harsh treatment which the female offspring experience, is the pride and anxious carefulness which wait on the male children. Indeed the Chinese are very much in the habit of having several wives, simply because by so doing they of course have a better chance of a number of male offspring, and it very frequently happens that the lawful wife of a Chinaman, if she has continued any length of time childless, will even seek out and bring to her husband a concubine by whom he may have heirs, that is,
sons.[114] In such cases the two wives usually continue on the best of terms, which cannot be said of those instances where the second or third wife is introduced into the family by the husband, without the intervention of his wife. According to the old Chinese law, the man had to be thirty, the woman twenty, before marriage. At present marriages, as a rule, are made between sixteen and twenty years of age. It may be assumed that one in every fifteen Chinese has more than one wife; the first, usually known as "number one," is generally taken from inclination, whereas the rest are usually bought, the price varying, according to their youth and beauty, from 100 to 600 dollars. This custom gives rise to quite a peculiar trade. Chinese women make a practice of purchasing for themselves from the poorer classes such of the female children as are of good health and well formed, whom they bring up with great care, with the view of selling them, when grown up, to the wealthy Chinese, and even sometimes to—European residents.[115] The custom of child-murder is most prevalent in the coast districts of the province of Fo-kien, so that latterly there was a positive scarcity of women, and marriageable girls had to be imported from the northern part of the province. The prevalence of this custom of child-murder in these localities is to be ascribed to the enormous migration of the male population to Siam, to the islands
of the Malay Archipelago, and other points. These emigrants supply the labour market in foreign countries, and but seldom return to their families. Numerous placards and pamphlets, pointing out the enormity of child-murder, and dissuading from its commission, are printed annually, partly at the cost of philanthropists, partly at that of the Chinese Government, and widely diffused, yet without producing any diminution in the practice of this appalling custom.
The custom of distorting the feet of the better class of women at the period of their birth, seems to have arisen from the jealousy of the husbands, who in thus preventing the possibility of gadding about, think they have secured an additional guarantee for the fidelity and chastity of their wives. However, one occasionally hears the first introduction of this singular and cruel custom ascribed to a Chinese empress having once been born with such distortion of the feet, and that in consequence it not only became the fashion among the females of the higher class in those days, out of pure obsequiousness, to imitate by artificial means a disfiguration accidentally arising from a freak of Nature, but even to recognize it as a necessary concomitant of the Chinese ideal of beauty.
The Governor of Hong-kong, Sir John Bowring, a distinguished savant, who received the members of the Expedition with the utmost consideration, invited them to his house and endeavoured to bring them into personal communication with those residents in the colony most interested in scientific
pursuits, so that each one of us could consult with the gentleman best able to advise him in his own department, and thus attain in the shortest time the most satisfactory results. Sir John, moreover, as President of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, admitted the members of the Expedition to the honours of an extraordinary session. He welcomed the Austrian naturalists in the heartiest manner, and expressed the most flattering anticipations from their visit. Very deserving of remark was the speech made on this occasion by the Lord Bishop of Hong-kong. In his capacity of a dignitary of the Church, he too bade us welcome in the warmest manner, and expressed his conviction that Christianity had nothing to fear, but only to hope, from the study of natural sciences! What would certain ultramontanists, had they been present, have replied to this remark of a high ecclesiastical dignitary?—they who consider government impossible without restricting the study of the natural sciences!