As he said when relating the circumstance to us, 'after drinks all round and a weed' we returned on deck to look about the vessel; next we visited the between-decks, and the Mandarins pronounced everything highly satisfactory. Seeing a Scuttle-Butt[83] pump, it attracted the attention of one of them, who took it to be an 'engine of war,' and asked to be informed as to the manner of its use! They soon after took leave and returned to the city. 'Thank heaven,' said Captain Endicott to a gentleman whom he had asked on board to see the Chinese officials, 'that's over; now that they are off, let us go down and take a drink and a smoke.' On getting to the cabin they found that everything—the gin and brandy, cigars, biscuits, even the water-jug, pitcher, and tumblers—had all been walked off with by the followers of the high dignitaries! A Chinese crew and naval Mandarin took possession, as Captain Endicott pulled away from his 'old home' for so many years. She was then duly turned into a Chinese man-of-war. There were the usual insignia of invincibility, triangular flags, on which were figures of dragons swallowing the moon, the 'Yin and Yang,' circles and zigzag lines, emblematical of thunder and lightning.
The commanding officer of all this destructive paraphernalia, with the peacock's feather in his cap, a large silk umbrella held over his head, seated himself comfortably in a bamboo chair, smoking his pipe.
Other formidable preparations for war were duly made in a provision of worm-eaten guns, matchlocks, spears, and shields. She would soon have been ready for an encounter with any of the English sloops, whether the 'Modeste' or the 'Algerine,' perhaps even the 'Herald;' but one night a great freshet took place. The violence of the tide was such that she swerved at her anchor from right to left, struck on the rocks close to the 'Folly,' slid off, and went down in deep water! The Chinese then set to work and unshipped her masts, leaving a stump of the foremast about seven feet above the deck, and placed upon it a diminutive lantern. This served thenceforth as a 'lighthouse' to guide boats up and down the river! It was the first lighthouse in Canton waters 'on record.' When I last saw the stump of the mast, twenty-eight years after, a great bank of mud had formed around the hull, and a faint glimmer from a penny dip in a small paper lantern marked the last resting-place of the 'Lintin.'
The seizure of the opium in its consequences was the feature in the breaking up of the exclusive conditions of foreign trade at Canton, as it had existed since 1720. The peculiar conditions also of social life were doomed, as was that perfect and wonderful organisation, the Co-Hong.
On August 10, 1841, Sir Henry Pottinger arrived at Macao as Her Majesty's sole plenipotentiary and Minister Extraordinary. Negotiations with the Mandarins were carried on simultaneously with the capture of cities on the coast. The material losses and destruction of life to the Chinese were incalculable, particularly through suicide by those helpless people. An English officer who was present at the taking of Chā-Po in May 1842 wrote to a friend at Macao that on landing, about 3,500 strong, under cover of the men-of-war, the most terrible enormities were committed. He then goes on to say: 'After the city had been captured, I entered more than a hundred houses, and in each there were not less than two, and in many eight, persons found dead. They were the bodies of mothers and daughters who had committed suicide from a dread of becoming prisoners; 1,600 dead were buried after the battle, of which more than one-half were Tartar soldiers, who in despair of repelling the enemy, and preferring death to defeat, had nearly all destroyed themselves. Is not this a splendid exhibition of patriotism?'
The losses of the English on this occasion by the official accounts were one colonel, one sergeant, and seven men killed, seven officers and forty-seven men wounded; and so on to the end, the pigmy against the giant!
At length the treaty of Nanking, in which the Chinese consented to pay an indemnity of $21,000,000, was signed off that city, on board of H.M.S. 'Cornwallis,' on August 29, 1842, by his Excellency Sir Henry Pottinger, the Imperial Commissioners Ke-Ying and E-Leepoo, and New-Keen, the Viceroy of Keang-Nan and Keang-Se. And thus concluded the first European war with China, one of the most unjust ever waged by one nation against another.
The next treaty was that of the United States, which was signed at the village of Mong-Hā (Macao) on July 3, 1844, by Mr. Caleb Cushing and Ke-Ying. Together they were the 'knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave' of Old Canton.