Inside Canton. Melchior Yvan

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СКАЧАТЬ his weight upon his adversary, crushed him in his embrace, and devoured a portion of his head. After glutting his wrath, the conqueror took up his position in the middle of the bowl, and waited for a new assailant; but no other knight had the audacity to present himself. Lablache returned in triumph to his palace, shaking proudly his solitary horn. All day long our faï-ting was the theatre of similar scenes.

      The Chinese never remain idle; when they do not work, they eat, play, or smoke. Night surprised us half-way between Macao and Canton, at the mouth of the Tchou-kiang, which the Europeans call the Bogue. There we passed the night at anchor. ​The next day with the rising tide we cleared the ports of the Tiger (Bocca Tigris, as the navigators say). This narrow pass obtains its name from an island which protects the entrance, and of which the double summit has some resemblance to a kneeling camel. From this moment, the banks of the Tchou-kiang became narrower and narrower, and we arrived before the village of Whampoa, where, a few days before, the French plenipotentiary and the viceroy of the two Kuangs had signed the treaty which was to bind France and China together for ten thousand years.

      Whampoa is situated on the slope of a vast hill, and European ships have been accustomed to cast anchor at its foot. It is in some sort a succursal to the port of Canton, which the avaricious mandarins have ceded to the barbarians. One day this concession will be real, and I am convinced that England will command sooner or later at Whampoa, as she commands now at Hong-kong. The landscape we discovered in ascending the river is unparalleled in richness; as far as the eye can see there are nothing but rice plantations, bordered in the most remarkable way by litchi and banana trees, in the midst of which groups of trees stand out, casting their shade over pagodas, temples, hamlets, and villages without number. This luxuriousness of growth has nothing in common with the unregulated fertility of land left entirely to itself; here nature has submitted with ​docility to the hand of labour; the smallest shrub, the most unimportant tree, only exists because it satisfies the wants or contributes to the enjoyment the master who has given it a place in the sun.

      In the midst of these immense carpets of verdure, solitary towers rise up at certain intervals, like trunks of giant trees struck by lightning, or stripped by the hand of winter. These octagonal monuments, with five, seven, and nine storeys, were constructed in ancient times, in order, it is said, to attract the essences of the earth, and by the concentration of its mysterious fluids to insure the fertility of these countries. Certainly the inhabitants had no need to have recourse to these cabalistic means; they possess within themselves wonderful secrets for subjecting rebellious nature and fertilising barren fields: the love of labour and prosperity, the spirit of order and economy. The aspect of the river itself testifies to the laborious habits of this enterprising race; on the bank women, naked to the haunches, are seeking in the mud of the Tchou-kiang for shells with which to make lime; while fishermen, on fragile rafts, pursue the unintelligent inhabitants of the waters, and follow them in the labyrinths which they have formed of flint in the bed of the river.

      The Tchou-kiang is the sole means of communication by which the commerce of Canton is carried on with the barbarians. It is by this channel, ​which twice a day runs in a different direction, as if to assist Chinese activity, that the manufactures which the European ships bring every year to the Celestial Empire, and the precious products which they take back, are exchanged. This prodigious amount of commerce makes the Chinese river one of the most animated water-routs in the world, compared with which the great rivers of France are timid brooks, bearing in their sinuous course a few insignificant cargoes. Six hours before reaching Canton, native vessels of all kinds and sizes are going and coming, amongst which some schooners of light build are seen, and a few steamers, elegantly constructed, and bearing the free standards of England and the United States. Shortly after our departure from Whampoa the flotillas of junks, faï-tings, and tankas, became so numerous that our ship furled its sails of reed, and we only proceeded with the oars, striking from time to time against all kinds of floating machines. At last night came, and half-an-hour afterwards we stopped before an impassable barrier formed by a compact mass of boats. Our men ceased to row, and the anchor was thrown out, and Callery said to me,—

      "We are at Canton."

      I cast my eyes in every direction. I was anxious to penetrate the darkness which surrounded it, in order to get at least the outline of the celebrated ​City; but the mysterious veil was not lifted for me that night. I could see nothing except some spherical globes at the tops of the masts, whose opaque light reminded me of those great phosphorescent Medusas which, in tropical regions, are seen rolling in the midst of the azure waters of the ocean. My travelling companions told me that we were in one of the poorest suburbs of the floating city. The laborious inhabitants of these agitated abodes were already asleep: all was silent around us, except that confused murmur which proceeds at night from the bosom of great towns, and which reached us through the distance. Occasionally, too, the sound of various stringed instruments was heard in the midst of this general hum.

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CHAPTER II.

       Table of Contents

      LIFE ON THE RIVER — A BREAKFAST OF TAO-FOU — CHINESE MILK — THE FLOATING TOWN — A CHINESE MANDARIN'S HOUSE.

      The next day, when I awoke, on quitting the ordinary reception room of the faï-ting, I was suddenly lost in a forest of dry wood. All around me was an inextricable confusion of poles and masts. These dead trees, adorned like those which are planted throughout France on days of general rejoicing, had on them, instead of leaves, standards and flags of all colours, and they seemed to grow naturally on the sterile and changing soil. This sinuous plain was the magnificent realisation of a celebrated canard, which formerly took flight from New York and went round the world: it was the floating isle with its towns, its fields, its heights, and valleys. Callery, who was with me, enjoyed my stupefaction; he was the more charmed at my amazement, as I am not easily astonished when travelling:

      "How shall we get out of here?" I asked him.

      "Be easy," replied he; " I have sent an express to Pan-se-Chen to announce our arrival, and he will not fail to send a mandarin boat to us."

      "Unless your messenger has wings, like the one from the ark, I do not see which way he can have escaped."

      ​

      "Keep yourself quiet," said Callery, by way of consolation; "observe the populace which surround you—it is worth the trouble; I promise to get you out of these floating steppes before long."

      I followed his advice. All the amphibious inhabitants were like so many workmen and citizens in their houses: they clean their dwelling-places, put all in order at home, or they indolently smoke their short pipes. The Chinese boats, without exception, have a clean and pleasant appearance: they are the poetic huts of the ocean, sheltering under their moving roof people as economical and laborious as those of Flanders. These houses are dressed every morning with unparalleled art and care; they are washed, and to embellish them cosmetics are used, which bring into relief the slightest veins of the most common wood. The liquids made use of are varnishes which flow naturally from different kinds of plants, or else from siccatine oils, which are prepared in China with peroxyde of manganese.

      In the next house to ours, one family particularly attracted my attention; it consisted of four persons, the mother about thirty-five years of age, a young girl fourteen, and two little boys between five and six years old. All of them were seated on the prow,—shaped like a poop,—which is used as a seat in these vessels, and were finishing their morning meal. The mother's countenance was mild and phlegmatic: her ​kind, fat face smiled on the laughing little children, who, with clean and well-shaved heads, held their pittance in their hands; the young girl—dressed like a tanka girl, her pig-tail, fastened behind the occiput, falling СКАЧАТЬ