When Captains Hill and Newsham came to visit me, they were astonished at the ruinous condition of my ship, and could scarcely think it possible for her to have made so long a passage. The rottenness of her cordage, and the raggedness of her sails, filled them with surprise and pity for my condition. When I had given them a short history of the voyage, and requested they would receive my officers and company, with their effects, they at once said, That they saw plainly my ship was in no condition to be carried any farther, and they were willing to receive us all as soon as we pleased, on payment of our passage. But the supercargoes were displeased that I had not applied to them, as they are the chief men here, though only passengers when aboard; so that I was quite neglected, and the English captains were ordered to fall down with their ships five or six miles below where I lay. I was thus left destitute in the company of five foreign ships; yet their officers, seeing me deserted by my countrymen, kindly offered me their services, and assisted me as much as they could, and without them I know not what might have been my fate, as I was under perpetual apprehensions that the Chinese would have seized my ship.
After the murder of the custom-house officer seemed to have been quite forgotten, a magistrate, called a Little Mandarin, committed the following outrageous action:At the beginning of the troubles, occasioned by that murder, he had received orders to apprehend all the English he could find, which he neglected till all was over. He then one day, while passing the European factories, ordered his attendants to seize on all the English he could see in the adjoining shops, and took hold of nine or ten, French as well as English, whom he carried, with halters about their necks, to the palace of the Chantock, or viceroy. Application was then made to the Hoppo, or chief customer, who represented matters to the viceroy in favour of the injured Europeans; on which the mandarin was sent for, and being unable to vindicate himself was degraded from his post, subjected to the bamboo, a severe punishment, and rendered incapable of acting again as a magistrate; the Europeans being immediately liberated. It appears to me, however, that the English are tyrannized over by the Chinese, and exposed to the caprices of every magistrate, wherefore I was the more urgent to be on board one of the European ships. I had now discovered my error in addressing the captains, and now sent a letter to the supercargoes, demanding a passage for myself, my officers, and ship's company, which I was sensible they could not refuse: but their compliance was clogged with a charge to the captains not to receive any thing belonging to us, unless consigned to the company in England.
The hoppo now made a demand upon me for anchorage in the river, amounting to no less than 6000 tahel, and, to quicken the payment, annexed a penalty to this extortion of 500 tahel for every day the payment was delayed. There were no means to avoid this gross imposition; and though a day necessarily elapsed before I could send up the money, I had to add the penalty of that day, so that he received 6500 tahel, or L. 2166:13:4 sterling;[1] being about six times as much as was paid for the Cadogan, the largest English ship there at the time, and which measured a third larger than mine. I soon after sold my ship for 2000 tahel, or L. 666, 13s. 4d. sterling, which money was consigned to the India Company, along with all the rest of my effects, and I prevailed on most of my officers and men to take their passage in the English homeward-bound ships.
Considering my short stay in China, and my bad health, I cannot be expected to give any tolerable account of this place from my own observation, and to copy others would be inconsistent with the purpose of this narrative, so that I shall only observe, that the English, at this time, had no settled factory at Canton, being only permitted to hire large houses, called hongs, with convenient warehouses adjoining, for receiving their goods previous to their shipment. For these they pay rent to the proprietors, and either hire the same or others, as they think proper, next time they have occasion for the accommodation.
Notwithstanding my utmost diligence, the business I was engaged in kept me in a continual hurry till the ships were ready to depart, which was in December, 1721: At which time, heartily tired of the country, and the ill usage I had met with, I sailed in the Cadogan, Captain John Hall, in company with the Francis, Captain Newsham; and as the latter ship sailed much better than the Cadogan, she left us immediately after getting out to sea. Finding his ship very tender, or crank, Captain Hill put in at Batavia, to get her into better trim. We continued here about ten days; but I can say little about that place, being all the time unable to stand on my legs, and was only twice out in a coach to take the air, two or three miles out of the city, in which little excursion I saw a great variety of beautiful prospects of fine country seats and gardens, and, indeed, every thing around shewed the greatest industry. The buildings in the city are generally very handsome, and laid out in very regular streets, having canals running through most of them, with trees planted on each side, so that Batavia may justly be called a fine city: But the sight is the only sense that is gratified here, for the canals smell very offensively when the tide is low, and breed vast swarms of muskitoes, which are more troublesome here than in any place I was ever in.
A great part of the inhabitants of Batavia are Chinese, who are remarkable for wearing there their ancient dress, having their hair rolled up in such a manner that there is little difference in that respect between the men and women. Ever since the revolution in China, which brought that country under the Tartar yoke, the Tartarian dress has been imposed upon the whole kingdom, which was not effected without great bloodshed: For many of the Chinese were so superstitiously attached to their ancient modes, that they unaccountably chose rather to lose their lives than their hair; as the Tartar fashion is to shave the head, except a long lock on the crown, which they plait in the same manner we do. The Dutch, taking advantage of this superstitious attachment of the Chinese to their hair, exact from all the men who live under their protection, a poll-tax of a dollar a month for the liberty of wearing their hair, which produces a very considerable revenue.
Hearing at Batavia that there were several pirates in these seas, Captain Hill joined the Dutch homeward-bound fleet in Bantam bay, and the Dutch commodore promised to assist Captain Hill in wooding and watering at Mew island, the water at Batavia being very bad. We fell in with the Francis in the Straits of Sunda, though we imagined that ship had been far a-head. The Dutch made this a pretence for leaving us before we got to Mew island, and Captain Newsham also deserted us, so that we were left alone. We continued six or seven days at Mew island, during which time several boats came to us from Prince's island, and brought us turtle, cocoa-nuts, pine-apples, and other fruits. From Mew island we had a very pleasant voyage to and about the Cape of Good Hope. By the good management of Captain Hill, although the Francis and the Dutch ships had the start of us seven days, by deserting us in the Straits of Sunda, we yet got to the cape seven days before the Francis, though she sailed considerably better than we. By comparing notes with the officers of the Francis, we found that she had suffered a good deal of bad weather off the south of Africa, while we, by keeping about ten leagues nearer shore, continually enjoyed pleasant weather and a fair wind, till we anchored in Table Bay, which we did towards the end of March, 1722.
We here found Governor Boon and others, bound for England in the London Indiaman. We had a pleasant voyage from the cape to St Helena, and thence to England, arriving off the Land's-end towards the close of July. On coming into the British channel we had brisk gales from the west, with thick foggy weather. In the evening of the 30th July we anchored under Dungeness, and that same night some of the supercargoes and passengers, among whom I was one, hired a small vessel to carry us to Dover, where we arrived the next morning early. The same day we proceeded for London, and arrived there on the 1st August, 1722. Thus ended a long, fatiguing, and unfortunate voyage, of three years, seven months, and eleven days, in which I had sailed considerably more than round the circumference of the globe, and had undergone a great variety of troubles and hardships by sea and land.
Footnote 1: [(return)]
At these proportions, the Chinese tahel is exactly 6s. 8d. sterling.E.