The Mission to Siam, and Hué the Capital of Cochin China, in the Years 1821-2. Finlayson George

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СКАЧАТЬ catalogue of his virtues, may be reckoned general sobriety, honesty, a quiet, orderly conduct, obedience to the laws of the country in which he resides; and, as is affirmed, a strong and unalterable sense of the important duties which parental affection inculcates. To this we may add a strong attachment to his native country, and the very questionable virtue of blind, undistinguishing admiration of, and submission to, all its laws.

      Notwithstanding this fair exterior, we shall find on examination that the Chinese have but little real pretension to moral distinction amongst nations; of the sublime, soothing, and pathetic duties of religion they are as ignorant as they are regardless; a mean, senseless, and unworthy superstition, the offspring of fear alone, has usurped its place amongst the many; while the learned affect a cold-hearted and scarcely intelligible theism. In all that regards the more amiable feelings of our nature, and that tends to unite the great family of the human race in closer union, they are still more deficient. A disgusting and culpable apathy, an involved and concentrated selfishness of gratification, a total disregard of the wants, and necessities, and helplessness of their fellow-creatures, marks the Chinese in their conduct through life. They know not the pleasure of doing good for its own sake. They not only talk of, but witness the misfortunes and distresses of their fellow-men, with an apathy of feeling little short of mockery. They will stipulate for reward with the wretch who is sinking in the water, before they will extend a saving arm. They will talk of the greatest scourges to which the human race is subject, famine, pestilence, war, as catastrophes almost to be wished for, – considering the survivors as benefited by the destruction of so many of their fellow-creatures. Their industry is the result of the quick sense of gratification which they derive from the indulgence of the more grovelling passions and animal appetites, and where these can be indulged without labour, the Chinese will be found to indicate their full share of Asiatic indolence.

      It must be confessed however that the Chinese are, in a political point of view at least, by far the most useful class of people to be found in the Indian Seas or Archipelago. Their robust frames, their industrious habits, and their moderate conduct, place them beyond competition. They furnish the best artisans, the most useful labourers, and the most extensive traders. Their commercial speculations are often extensive, often of the most adventurous nature; and we may remark by the way, that they are often immoderately fond of games of chance, as cards, dice, cock-fighting. Inebriety is a vice of which they are but rarely guilty. At their meals they indulge in the use of ardent spirits, undiluted, but never use them to excess.

      In point of mental capacity, they would appear to be inferior to many other Asiatic tribes. They are chiefly distinguished by a certain mechanical turn in all they do; and even their mental operations partake of this distinction.

      Notwithstanding the prohibitory laws of the Celestial Empire, there would appear to be no other limit to the extent of emigration than the capacity of individuals to procure a passage to the neighbouring countries, modified in some degree by the greater or less demand for industry. It must be recollected however, that this emigration is to be considered as temporary, the majority of the Chinese calculating upon returning after a time to their respective provinces. Their wives, – or females of any description, are not permitted to accompany them abroad, to which circumstance it is perhaps chiefly owing, that the Chinese have formed no colonies or settlements; for the establishment of which their situation is peculiarly favourable. Superior in point of civilization, industry, and physical strength to the nations around them, they neither aim at conquest nor power over their weaker neighbours. They are content to be permitted to follow their respective occupations, and are satisfied with the fair returns of their labour. Yet in many of the commercial settlements of the Archipelago, they constitute the majority of the population; whilst in many of the Malay states, their proportion to the latter is so great as three to one, or even more. This is particularly the case in the mining districts of Borneo, as at Sambas, Pontiana, and more particularly in the surrounding country, where it is said that upwards of 30,00 °Chinese are occupied in searching for gold dust. Their masters are here little better than savages; than whom none are more cruel or more despotic. Mild and just laws are unknown to people in this state of society, and therefore cannot be urged as the cause of the unpretending conduct of the Chinese. This instance of general submission to a people so greatly inferior to themselves, stands so much in opposition to the ordinary conduct of man under similar circumstances, that we may be permitted to doubt whether it is to be reckoned a virtue or its opposite in the character of the Chinese; whether as affording a proof of their love of peace and horror of aggression, or rather as a demonstration of unparalleled pusillanimity and the total want of military ardour. Certain it is that the Malays hold them in contempt as opponents. The emigrant Chinese are almost exclusively from the provinces of Canton and Fokien, chiefly from the latter. It is this last also which furnishes the principal maritime population of China. They carry on a considerable commerce in junks throughout the China Seas and Archipelago, from Manilla to Penang, the boundaries of their maritime excursions on the east and west. Nothing can be conceived more rude, awkward, and unmanageable, than the vessels they navigate, called junks; except indeed we bring into the comparison their great ignorance of the science of navigation. A Chinese junk gives no bad idea of what one might suppose the ark to have been. She resembles more an oblong substantial wooden house than a ship. In maritime affairs, the Chinese appear to have derived little or rather no benefit from their intercourse with Europeans. The immutable laws of the Celestial Empire forbid alteration: yet these laws could never have checked improvement for so many centuries; and we find that all vessels built by the Chinese, in the dominions of foreign powers, as at Siam, Cambodia, &c., as well as in their own country, are invariably of this form. The Malay race on the contrary, eagerly adopt improvements. We may observe a marked superiority in the naval architecture of the Buggis people for instance, a superiority which is daily increasing, in proportion as they become better acquainted with Europeans.

      The junks which visited Singapore during our stay there, were from Canton Amoy, Cochin China, and the islands to the east. The larger vessels carried from two to three hundred tons burden. They had neither chart nor book of any description on board, nor any written document to point out their route. They had no means even of ascertaining the ship’s way, neither did it appear that they kept any account of transactions on board. They had a rude compass, set in a wooden frame, and divided into twenty-four points, which they did not appear to put great dependence on, and this was probably the only nautical instrument on board. Their mode of proceeding, is to set out with the favourable monsoon. After reaching a certain point without losing sight of land, they stand across the China Sea, calculating that they will, as they generally do, reach the opposite side in ten or twelve days. They make but one voyage across the China Sea in a year; on their return, they sometimes make a short coasting voyage in addition, after which the junk is hauled up, covered with straw, and laid aside till the following season. The owner generally voyages in his own junk, but does not always navigate it, another individual attending to that duty. The crew have a share in the cargo.

      Their provision consists of pork, fowls, rice, and abundant store of pickled greens in large tubs; the latter strongly reminds one of the sour crout of the northern nations of Europe, from which it probably differs but little. Tea is their favourite beverage; they use it at all hours of the day, making it in small quantities at a time; their cups contain little more than two or three drachms.

      In a small recess in the poop, there is always to be found a sort of temple, ornamented with shreds of gold-leaf, or painted paper, and containing three or four small images of porcelain or wood, dressed in a tawdry and clumsy manner. These are regarded as tutelary deities, to whom offerings of meat, rice, &c., are daily made. Their attributes, as far as we could comprehend their nature, seemed to be analogous to those of the Grecian deities that directed the winds and the rains.

      Similar temples are to be seen in all the houses of the Chinese.

      Inferior to these in the knowledge of all the arts of civilized life, as well as in industry, stature, strength, and general appearance; but their superiors in point of courage and military enterprise, and above all in the possession of an ardent mind and exalted imagination, stand the Malays, a race of people whose origin, still involved in obscurity, would seem to be СКАЧАТЬ