[193] The Styx.
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[194] These words require some explanation. Ordinarily they would be taken in the sense of casting cash of a base description; but they might equally well signify the casting of iron articles of any kind, and thereby hang some curious details. Iron foundries in China may only be opened under license from the local officials, and the articles there made, consisting chiefly of cooking utensils, may only be sold within a given area, each district having its own particular foundries from which alone the supplies of the neighbourhood may be derived. Free trade in iron is much feared by the authorities, as thereby pirates and rebels would be enabled to supply themselves with arms. At the framing of the Treaty of Tientsin, with its accompanying tariff and rules, iron was not specified among other prohibited articles of commerce. Consequently, British merchants would appear to have a full right to purchase iron in the interior and convey it to any of the open ports under Transit-pass. But the Chinese officials steadily refuse to acknowledge, or permit the exercise of, this right, putting forward their own time-honoured custom with regard to iron, and enumerating the disadvantages to China were such an innovation to be brought about.
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[195] The allusion is to women, of a not very respectable class.
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[196] No Chinese magistrate would be found to pass sentence upon a man who stole food under stress of hunger.
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[197] His own village.
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[198] The whole story is meant as a satire upon the iniquity of the Salt Gabelle.
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[199] The chief supporters of superstition in China.
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[200] See No. I., [note 39].
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[201] Such is one of the most common causes of hostile demonstration against Chinese Christians. The latter, acting under the orders of the missionaries, frequently refuse to subscribe to the various local celebrations and processions, the great annual festivities, and ceremonies of all kinds, on the grounds that these are idolatrous and forbidden by the Christian faith. Hence bad feeling, high words, blows, and sometimes bloodshed. I say “frequently,” because I have discovered several cases in which converts have quietly subscribed like other people rather than risk an émeute.
An amusing incident came under my own special notice not very long ago. A missionary appeared before me one day to complain that a certain convert of his had been posted in his own village, and cut off from his civic rights for two years, merely because he had agreed to let a room of his house to be used as a missionary dépôt. I took a copy of the placard which was handed to me in proof of this statement, and found it to run thus:—“In consequence of —— having entered into an agreement with a barbarian pastor, to lease to the said barbarian pastor a room in his house to be used as a missionary chapel, we, the elders of this village, do hereby debar —— from the privilege of worshipping in our ancestral hall for the space of two years.” It is needless, of course, to mention that Ancestral Worship is prohibited by all sects of missionaries in China alike; or that, when I pointed this out to the individual in question, who could not have understood the import of the Chinese placard, the charge was promptly withdrawn.
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