History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce, Volume 1 (of 4)

by W. S. Lindsay

SMALL JUNK. PARO.

A comparison of the Chinese boats with those of the ancient Britons.

Moreover, the ordinary junk now in use for the coasting and inland navigation of that country, will be noticed as forming an exact counterpart of many of the Egyptian vessels engaged on the trade of the Nile, and, more especially, that called paro, another description of trading craft very common in China; while the account given by Sir George Staunton of some of the small vessels of China exhibits a remarkable similitude between these and the ancient boats of Britain. “The boats,” he says, “commonly in use among them, consist of five planks only, joined together without ribs or timber of any kind. These planks are bent to the proper shape by being exposed some time to a flame of fire. They are brought to a line at each end, and the edges are joined together with wooden pins, and stitched[256] with bamboo split into flexible threads, and the seams afterwards smeared with a paste made with quicklime from sea-shells and water. Others are made of wicker-work, smeared all over, and rendered watertight, by the same composition as is used for the former. The owners affect to paint eyes upon the heads of all these boats, as if to denote the vigilance requisite in the conduct of them. They are remarkable for standing the sudden shock of violent waves, as well as for being stiff upon the water, and sailing expeditiously. The boat belonging to the chief of the district was built upon the same plan, but on a larger scale, had a carved and gilt head, bearing some resemblance to that of a tiger, and a stern ornamented with sculpture, and painted with a variety of designs in lively colours. In these boats the principal sitters are generally at the stem, instead of being near the stern, as is the custom of Europe.”

Considering themselves to be the most ancient and the most learned of people, the Chinese were too vain to learn from others; they thought they knew more than anybody else, and they think so still; for, having daily before them some of the most magnificent European ships of modern times, they still retain the ancient form of the junk. To a people so fond of money, and so industrious, one would have thought that the fact of such vessels conducting the most valuable trade on the Chinese coast, would have induced them to make some endeavour, by means of shipping better found and better fitted than are any they possess, to retain a trade for centuries originally and exclusively their own.

Nowhere are their failings in this respect better exemplified than in the report of the embassy under Lord Macartney, sent from Great Britain to Pekin in 1792. “It is not uncommon,” remarks the writer of this report, “on board Chinese vessels to have maps or sketches of their intended route, with the neighbouring headlands cut out or engraved upon the back of empty gourds, the round form of which corresponds in some sort to the figure of the earth. Such a similitude may have sometimes contributed to render these sketches somewhat less erroneous, but the advantage is accidental, for neither the astronomers nor navigators of China have varied much from the first rude notions entertained among mankind, that the whole earth was one flat surface, in the middle of which the Chinese took for granted that their own empire was situated, thence emphatically styled by them, the ‘empire of the middle;’ all other countries surrounding it being, in their estimation, comparatively small, and lying towards the edge, or margin of the earth, beyond which all must be a precipitate and dreadful void.”

The conquests of Alexander in India, B.C. 327-5.

With the conquests of Alexander commence our first really historical knowledge of India. For, if Alexander left behind him, at his premature death, the fame of a mighty conqueror, he no less deserves that of a great civilizer, by the wisdom he displayed in opening up new channels of commercial intercourse.[257] In the foundation of Alexandria (B.C. 332) he showed how keenly he was alive to the value of the commerce between Europe and the East, while he was, at the same time, the first to lay down the principle that the command of the sea secures the possession of the land; and to carry that principle into practice, by raising his fleets from insignificance until they held dominion over all waters accessible to them. Alexander saw that the extension of the commercial intercourse of his people would do more to consolidate his power than military conquest; hence he had the wisdom to establish in the path of his conquests, ports, cities, and institutions, with which his name has been, and will be, imperishably associated. Although there will always be some persons who can see nothing but desolation and ruin in the paths of a great conqueror, who deem great soldiers the necessary enemies of mankind, and who cannot recognise either the foresight or the motives of men such as Alexander the Great, yet even they must admit that the world ultimately reaped a rich harvest through the creation of Alexandria, and that his triumphs in Asia gain additional renown from his efforts to increase geographical knowledge, and to bring India, by means of a more rapid communication by sea, nearer to Europe than it had ever been before his time.

Nor were the designs of this great conqueror confined to an increase of facilities for conducting with greater rapidity and safety the commercial intercourse of the nations of the West, requiring, as these did for their daily wants, commodities India could alone supply. Alexander created new channels of trade, and fresh wants, and fresh hopes for each country he successively overcame. Instead of devastation and misery marking his progress through Syria and Asia Minor, these countries were greatly enriched by his sovereignty, while their inhabitants secured more freedom and prosperity than they had ever enjoyed under their native princes. Egypt, under the dynasty of the Ptolemies, the first founder of which, Ptolemy the son of Lagos, was one of Alexander’s most trusted generals, obtained a commercial pre-eminence it had not enjoyed during any previous period of its history. Again, when Alexander advanced into the district now known as the Panjâb, he conferred many advantages on the natives, and imparted to them much practical and valuable knowledge. Almost everywhere he founded Greek cities or colonies (Plutarch gives their number as seventy), diffusing the manners and customs of his own people over the vast tracts of land from the temple of Ammon in the Lybian oasis to the banks of the Indus. Thus he brought into contact with his own refined and civilized Greeks, not merely Oriental nations that were highly gifted in their own way, but also the semi-barbarous tribes of many lands, teaching them the advantages of commercial intercourse, and extending by its influence the comforts which habits of industry can alone bestow, together with the many blessings civilization confers. His conquests, like the discoveries of Columbus, made known the existence of rich regions before unsuspected, and countries where millions of the human race could find remunerative occupation.

The gain of commerce by his conquests.