1857. A Interior China. a bit of rag a few inches long, which merely result of tricks played by European imaginserves to remove a little of the extraneous dust, ations on supposed Chinese landscape :while an inch thick of dirt is frequently left ad"Towards evening, we were pleasingly struck hering to the table. It is a very rare thing to see a broom pass over the floor, which being made with the view which presented itself before us (as of earth easily imbibes the slops, and conceals they sailed on the Grand Canal). A beautiful them from the view. The mud brought in by pavilion, three stories high, with a granite foundapassengers only adds to the material of which the tion, and a scolloped roof, met the eye, rising up floor is composed. And all bones, rice, and other from the midst of the broad canal, and throwing eatables, are carefully cleaned away by the dogs. its lenghthened shadow across the waters. It "The first question, on entering such a house was about fifty feet wide at the base, which was of entertainment, is, whether they have got any four-square; on a terrace formed of large blocks of rice and vegetables; which is generally answered stone, rose the pavilion, about fifty feet high, with in the affirmative, coupled with a polite confes its neatly painted windows and doors, its fantastic sion of the poverty of their preparations, a con- gables and concave ridges, each of its many corfession, the truth of which the writer has seldom ners terminating in a bell, and each of its rows of felt himself at liberty to dispute; the accompani- tiles being turned up with variegated porcelain. ments to the rice, provided on such occasions, The name of this handsome structure was Tezebeing the poorest and most insipid imaginable. yun-shen-sze, 'the hall for contemplation covered Should any customer wish anything further, he is by favouring clouds.' It was built in the Súng at liberty to send out for some pork, should dynasty, and, after having been repaired under such be procurable. The sleeping rooms are sel the Ming sovereigns, was rebuilt in the twentieth dom provided with windows, and the only avenue year of Kang-he. Beyond the pavilion appeared for light is through the door, which, opening into a pagoda, six stories high, surmounted by a crown, very elegant and in good repair. At the another apartment, admits but a feeble ray. It is, perhaps, as well that such is the case, as, were foot of the pagoda, was a town called Chin-tsihthe room better illumined, its dirt and deformi- chin, containing ten thousand inhabitants. The name of the place, signifying well-watered ty would be more conspicuous, and fastidious strangers might be deterred from entering. The town,' was given in consequence to its vicinity to bed-room is sometimes provided with separate the Thaé-hoo, or Great Lake, from which it is bed places for each individual, consisting of a not above five miles distant."-MEDHURST, P. frame-work about six feet long, three broad, and Dr. Medhurst visited Hoo-chow, the chief two high, upon which is spread a layer of straw, covered by a mat; but more frequently one end seat of the silk cultivation in China, and he of the room is occupied by a larger frame-work, national branch of industry. This he has about six feet wide and ten long, upon which has given a minute account of this great three or four guests may sleep together. "Should the strangers not be provided with done by a series of extracts from a book on coverlets, the establishment offers to furnish a the silk culture, which had been recently cotton-wadded quilt to each customer; but as the issued by the "Treasurer of the Province." coolies and chair-bearers, with all sorts of dirty These extracts afford peculiarly interesting fellows, have been in the habit of using these for information on the growth and treatment of months or years, adding to the stock of filth and vermin which they contain every successive time, mulberry trees-on the rearing and manIn addiit follows that such coverlets are anything but agement of the silk-worm-on the gathering agreeable, and, of course, only the lowest class of and winding of silk-and on the mode of customers avail themselves of the benefit. Each conducting a silk establishment. traveller must, therefore, take with him his own tion to the maps and the plans of cities mat, quilt, and pillow; and, with every precau- given in his book, he has copied from the tion, will find it difficult to escape coming in con- native Chinese work, wood-cuts of all the tact with the dirt and noxious insects already present in such dormitories. The instruments used by the owners of mulberry floor is sometimes boarded, but washing is out of plantations in the cultivation of the trees, in the question; and the cobwebs in the corners indicate the entire absence of brooms ever since the erection of the building. In short, the whole establishment partakes of the united qualities of stable and pig-stye, falling far short of what those respectable receptacles are in most civilized countries. The only agreeable thing is the basin of hot water, which is invariably presented on entering, for the purpose of washing the face, hands, or feet of travellers; and the cup of warm tea which immediately follows."-MEDHURST, P. 18. The following sketch from nature, will show that the scene-painting on the "Delft" of many a breakfast-table in Britain, is not, as we have been in the habit of thinking, the the management of the worms, and in the gathering and spinning of the silk. The cuts are, no doubt, very rude, but they enable the reader to understand at a glance the form of the various articles.* "In the evening we arrived at Hoo-chow, but the lateness of the hour prevented me observing *Mr. Fortune must not have been aware of this visit when he wrote the introduction to his volume, for he says, "During a sojourn of some months in the heart of the great silk country, I had an oppor tunity of seeing the cultivation of the mulberry, the of the silk; and these interesting operations are now feeding and rearing of the silkworms, and the reeling described, I believe, for the first time by an English eye-witness." much of its beauty. The walls appeared in good | learned that, when yet an infant, the young repair, about twenty-five feet high and twenty person had been take into her house in thick. The canal passed through the city, under order to be reared there, that when he grew the walls, where there was a water gate, spanned "There by a finely-turned arch, at least twenty feet high. up he should marry her daughter. Travelling among the Woó-Yuên hills, though found full of interest, was not very pleasant. On passing through, we were detained by an old had been," he was told, "an exchange; the man, who demanded money of us, because it was one family having two sons, and the other dark. Our people offered him five cash; but he two daughters, born within a few years of rejected that sum with scorn, saying, that noth- each other; and thus, to suit the convenience ing less than fifteen would satisfy him. He was of both, this family parted with a daughter, however, contented with ten, and lifted up the to become the future bride of one of the bar to let us pass. Having entered the city, we found the canal wider than on the outside, with sons of that family; while the other son of many ve-sels coming and going; while the banks that family was transferred, to become the of the canal were lined with stores and ware- future bridegroom of the remaining daughhouses, giving the appearance of a very populous ter of this." and commercial city. About the middle of the city we came to a large bridge of three arches; the centre one was about fifty feet wide, and the other two nearly equal to it. The top of the bridge was almost flat, and not elevated as most of the "Here the wind and rain prevailed so much, Chinese bridges are. The name of this bridge that the chair-bearers would not venture to ascend was pa-yay-keaou, or, hold your tongue bridge;' the hill which lay before us, so that we were every Chinese in passing under it, feeling it ne- obliged to put up at a miserable hovel which precessary to hold his tongue; more out of super-sented itself, in the name of an inn, at the foot of stition, however, than in obedience to any public the hill. The accommodation was of the most order. There are several pagodas and many wretched kind; we procured shelter from the rain, temples in Hoo-chow; but as the evening was far advanced, we had not an opportunity of seeing them. Having passed the residence of the Chefoo, or prefect of city, we thrust our boat in among a number of others, near a market-place; and after the din of voices around us had subsided, we fell asleep."-MEDHURST, p. 58. Hoo-chow, the centre of one of the most important of Chinese branches of industry, is believed to be a very old town. It is spoken of, under the name of Yâng chow, as existing during the reign of Yu, who ruled, according to the native chronology, at a time corresponding to our B.C. 2205, and many years before the death of Noah, if we take the received method of Scripture chronology!—Noah having been born, according to the usual reckoning, about B. C. 2948 (Gen. v. 28, 29), and having died at the age of 950 (Gen. ix. 28, 29), in 1998 B. C. This date assigned to Hoo-chow, though evidently very erroneous, implies the great antiquity of the city, around which, from time immemorial, the Chinese have cultivated their gardens of mulberry trees, and gathered abundance of silk. It is situated pleasantly on the Great Canal, to the south of the T'haé-hoô, or Great Lake, from which it is said to derive its name. The city in its present form, is believed to have been built about A. D. 620. it is true, but that was nearly all. The hut which we had to lodge in, admitted the wind at every corner; and a recess was offered us as a bed-place, which must have been tenanted by beggars and thieves for many a day previously. For provisions, the people could furnish us with nothing but coarse red rice, and a few pickled beans to tempt it down. They did not forget to charge, however, as much as if we had been favoured with peared to be of the clay-slate formation, mixed the best accommodation and supplies. The hill apwith conglomerate; the dip was towards the northeast. "The hill itself, which is called Sin-ling, is said by the Chinese to be 6000 feet high. I found it, however, by counting the steps we ascended, to the foot of the pass over which we crossed. The be no more than 1500 feet, from the hamlet at peaks of the neighboring mountains were much higher. It adjoins on the west the Foo-yung, or Marsh-mallow Hill, and constitutes with the Tuy-king, Shòw-tów, and Tib-shing hills, the five lofty mountains for which this region is celebrated. There are various caves and rocky dells among these hills, which are adorned by temples and pa vilions, where the traveller or devotee may rest; and in the recesses of which priests are found, fostering and perpetuating the system of Buddha. In one of these pavilions there is a Chih-sun, or stalagmite, twenty feet high. A Chinese poet has celebrated these five mountain peaks in his song as follows: 666 The five-pointed mountain rears its lofty head, Where the marsh-mallow lifts its lofty blossoms to the sky; At every step we ascend higher and higher, Near Woo-Yuen, Dr. Medhurst found a custom prevailing, which gives us a glimpse at some of the peculiarities of Chinese family arrangements. He met an old woman who was making a great lamentation for the death of an intended son-in-law. Having going, made inquiry about the circumstance, he But we press on until we reach the azure clouds.' "The scenery, whilst winding amongst these hills, is picturesque in the extreme. Here and there a rocky dell, in the bosom of which lay a Buddhist temple; now and then, a monumental pillar or gateway, intended to perpetuate some supposed benevolent act, or virtuous female; while the works of nature, more sublime by far than works of art, with which they were intended to be adorned, rose in awful grandeur, and over "The rain having ceased, my companion de- describes with great ability, and in a fresh termined to proceed. We passed in succession and simple style, the leading physical feaover five different mountains as described above. tures of the districts in which he sojourned, The road was well paved the whole way; flat and especially their varied, and often novel, stones having been laid down six feet wide, and formed into regular steps, up and down the hills. forms of vegetable life. Seldom have we Sometimes the road was paved with slabs of found two volumes on any one country, coarse marble, and sometimes with large round written by men of such widely differing ocpebbles, brought from the brooks below. We cupations and habits of thought, agreeing so observed also a white kind of stone, which ap- thoroughly on all the main points touched peared to be pure felspar, resembling that of which the Chinese porcelain is made, interpersed generally little true sympathy with the selfThe man of science has upon by both. with a hard red stone like porphyry. All of these appeared to be quarried out of the denying labours of love and works of faith neighbouring hills. The natives informed us, of the earnest missionary; and the mere that the paved road was constructed by a traveller for travel's sake, for pleasure or man whose surname was Wáng. The whole adventure, has little fellow-feeling with is the result of voluntary effort. The mass either. This state of matters is, however, of the rock of which the hills are composed now rapidly passing away. Zeal and perseems to be gneiss, mixed occasionally with the sonal piety are no longer regarded the only felspar and porphyry. On one side of the hills, the dip of the strata is towards the north-east, qualifications either for ministerial or misand on the other, towards the south-west; hence sionary work. Gospel ministers and missionthe disturbing force which upheaved the mass aries can, in very many instances, measure must have been somewhere about the central minds with men of literature and science. ridge. The angle of the dip is from thirty to In some cases, as in Morrison, and Duff, and fifty degrees; and sometimes the strata are quite Livingstone, they stand the whole head and vertical. those branches of human knowledge the aim shoulders taller than many who have made and business of their lives. The effects of this are daily becoming apparent. The official witnesses for Christ are no longer held to be "universally men of one idea," but men, in the wide embrace of whose love the literature and science of the world are folded, and set aside for the service of the Great King, or hung up in the temple as signs that the We leave Dr. Medhurst's pleasant and in- world's wisdom has been overcome for His forming book with the persuasion, that how-service and glory. The learned of London, ever many travellers may, in the future, speak of the interior of China, few will be able to throw more light on its strange customs, or make it more interesting to Europeans, than has been already done by the enthusiastic, accomplished, and devoted agent of" The London Missionary Society." heathen; the merchants of Shanghae and Mr. Fortune, in his "Residence among the Chinese," goes over much of the ground travelled by Dr. Medhurst; but he looks at it from different points of view, and under the influence of different motives. The former saw everything as a Christian missionary; and the desire constantly present with him was, that he might be enabled to do something for the spiritual good of as many as he found it safe to address-something which might yet tell on the future of that degraded and populous land. The latter travelled for a purpose as well defined as that of the missionary, but of a very different kind. The social peculiarities rather than the moral, and the economic characteristics rather than the spiritual, are deal with in his present able volume. As a man These remarks find frequent illustrations of science an accomplished botanist-he in "the Residence among the Chinese." Its towered them all." Paris, and New York, have often been constrained to quote, as authorities in Historic Criticism, in Ethnology, and in Physical Science, the men whose motives they have seldom fully understood when they witnessed, or were told of, their labours among the Hong Kong have found them opening the way for their traffic; and the "Politicals" of Calcutta and Bombay have more than once had to take lessons from them in statecraft. Those who stay at home reap the benefit also. Time was, when a man, sitting down to describe a country over which he had passed, would have thought it an incumbent duty to hold up to ridicule the crude views of the missionaries he had met with, and expose, as he would call it, the utter uselessness of all their endeavours. But now we find almost every intelligent and well-principled traveller corroborating, at almost every point, the reports which the missionaries send periodically to the parent societies. author, we believe, like "risen from the ranks." of the literature of Chinese Discovery-of European travel among that remarkable people, and of zealous, large-hearted, and adventurous Missionary Enterprise for their good, pursuade us that the men who have done most in these fields of action, have fought their way into great usefulness and a name through very great hinderances. Medhurst, the printer's boy, was, we have seen, in this case; and so was Fortune, the Berwickshire peasant's son. Medhurst, has which gave such interest to that volume, What we know are sure to turn to "the Residence in China," and they will not be disappointed. We meet with several incidents, both in Medhurst's book and in "the Residence in China," which show that the Chinaman is ever on the alert for an opportunity of deceiving, or of playing a hoax on, the Barbarians and Pak-Qwie-tze, or white devils. They greatly delight in such opportunities. Shortly after the author of "The Residence in China" arrived at Shanghae, an earthquake occurred which greatly alarmed the Mr. Fortune spent his boyhood on the foreigners. A report was soon spread highly cultivated banks of the Blackadder, among them, that a populous village had one of the tributaries of the Tweed, and on been swallowed up by it. They even went these, or among the rich plantations and most minutely into the matter, and alleged picturesque hedge-rows of the Merse, he that it had been destroyed because of its got his first lessons in Botany. Having re- great wickedness. Mr. Fortune and several ceived the education usually given to the child-friends having resolved to visit the scene of ren of the Scottish peasantry at the parish- the reported catastrophe, made some inschool, he entered the garden of the late quiries about the locality. Mr. Buchan of Kelloe, the author of "The Wreck of the Winterton," and a man whose name is associated with most of those grand schemes of Christian enterprise which have given the character to this age. Mr. Buchan saw the talents of his youthful gardener, and got a way opened for him in the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens. Here he made great progress in his favourite pursuits. Ultimately attracted to the South, he found in London a sphere of labour, in which his skill and enterprise soon became known, and led to his appointment as Botanical Collector to the Horticultural Society of London. In the Preface to the volume which stands at the head of this Article, Mr. returned, he informed me that he had made the Fortune says," From 1848 to the begin-requisite inquiries about the sunken village—that ning of 1851, I was engaged by the Honour- such an occurrence had taken place, but instead able Court of Directors of the East India of the spot being up the river, we must go down Company in procuring supplies of teaplants, seeds, implements, and green-ten makers, for the government plantations in the Himalayas. In the end of 1852, I was deputed a second time by the East India Company, for the purpose of adding to the collections already formed, and particularly of procuring first-rate black-tea makers for the experimental tea farms in India. The present volume gives an account of my last travels amongst the Chinese-from 1852 to 1856." "I had been told the spot was distant from Shanghae some thirty miles up the river, and in a south-westerly direction; but the more minute my inquiries were, the greater difficulty I had in finding out the exact locality. In the meantime, all our arrangements had been made except the hiring of boats, and we had agreed to start on the following morning. I had an excellent servant, a man who had travelled with me for several years, and whose duty it was to engage the boats we required for the journey. Before he left me for this purpose, I desired him to take care the boatman knew the road, as it would never do to find out, after we had started, that no one knew which way to go. He left me on this mission, and was absent about two hours. When he in an opposite direction in order to find it. At the same time, he told me candidly he did not think the boatman knew anything about the matter, and said I had better not go until something more satisfactory could be ascertained concerning it. I was reluctantly compelled to admit that his advice was good, and wrote to the others saying we had better put off the journey. And now it is worth while to mark the result of all this, in order to get an idea of the extraordinary character of the people of China. A few days afterwards, we were told with the greatest coolness, by the same parties who had formerly given the information about the sunken village, that it was quite true such an occurrence had taken place, but that it had happened about two hundred years ago!""-FORTUNE, p. 6. When about twelve miles from Ning-po, our author met with one of the many evidences which bulk out in the eye of the traveller, that the people are wholly given to idolatry. After having given us a brief, 1857. Interior China. of the mountain road which leads to the temple, and a curious and strange view this was. Whether I looked before or behind me, I beheld crowds of "Leaving Tai-ping-Wang to fight his battles their way to worship at the altars of the unin Kiang-su and elsewhere, I sailed for the town people of both sexes, and of all ages, wending of Ning-po, in the province of Chekiang, and on known God.' They were generally divided into my arrival at that port, started immediately for small groups-little families or parties-as they the tea districts in the interior. I had engaged had left their native villages, and most of these a small covered boat, such as is used on the canals in this part of the country. . . . As we had travelled all night, we reached the end of the canal some time before day-break. I had slept pretty well on the way, but was now awakened by the sounds of hundreds of voices, some talking, others screaming at their loudest pitch, and the shrill tones of the women were heard far but clear and satisfactory account of the little eminence beyond it, I obtained a long view movements of the rebels, he says: parties had a servant or two walking behind I observed two or three of these seats slung every whereness of a Divine One as a life- As a botanist, not less than as a man with a fine sense of the beautiful, Mr. Fortune must have enjoyed this May scene. "After taking my morning cup of tea within sight of numerous plantations of the herb' itself, which are dotted on the sides of the hills here, I "As it was now the bonnie month of May,' joined the motley crowd, and proceeded with them to Ayuka's temple. When I got outside of the little village at the end of the canal, and on a the rice crops had been some time in the ground. VOL. XXVII. D-4 |