Inside Canton. Melchior Yvan

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СКАЧАТЬ of the intelligent justice of a Canton mob. Some temporary buildings have been constructed on the ground they occupied, and the foundation is hardly dug for the future English factory.

      The Americans inhabit nearly the centre of this little town, and they have absorbed within their limits four ancient hongs known by the names of Paou-choun, Ma-ying, Soui, Loung-chun, and Fung-tai. At last, on the 26th of October, 1843, an incendiary, the effect of chance, came to the assistance of the popular demolishers, and destroyed two streets on the west. Whatever be the result of these changes, the little town of the barbarians has preserved its primitive appearance, and some of its streets bear names which seem to indicate that each of them is exclusively inhabited by merchants of the ​same nation, to the exclusion of all others. Thus there are a Danish, a Portuguese, a Spanish, and even a French factory; but these designations are quite arbitrary. In reality, of all the Western nations, the Americans only are at home, and have built at Canton a palace worthy of the conquerors of our age, of the rivals of the English, of the peaceful soldiers of prosperity and industry.

      The interests of all the Christian nations in China are intimately united; and it is to be regretted that the French Government, the natural ally of all free governments, has not joined those of Great Britain and the United States to found on the shores of the Tchou-kiang a real western town, by uniting on one common spot the edifices which, according to the latest treaties, each nation has a right to erect at the open ports for purposes of commerce. This simultaneous act would have shown the Chinese the good understanding between all civilised nations; it would have insured the safety of our missionaries and merchants much better than the menacing preparations on board the fleets, protected by the flags of England, the United States, and France.

      The part appropriated by the barbarians contains, nevertheless, three streets which are completely Chinese. One is celebrated in the memory of sailors. Europeans gave it the name of Hog Lane: in Chinese, San-taou-Lan. It lies between the ruins of the ​English hong and to the east of the American hong. Although you do not now see the unclean animal, there which gave it its name, that name still belongs to it by just right. It is a kind of low tavern, into which the Chinese invite the sailors, to sell them at a low price adulterated and fetid spirits. The numerous shops in this dark passage are at all hours the theatre of the most disgusting and licentious scenes of drunkenness. The two other Chinese streets are better frequented: one called Old China Street, and T'sing-youen by the Chinese, is situated between the French hong and an open place which joins the American hong; and the other, New China Street, or Toung-wan, comes after the French factory and precedes the Danish hong.

      The banks of the Tchou-kiang, which runs through the district of the hongs, psesent from time to time convenient landing-places, round which are grouped flotillas of tankas, whose proprietors shout to you without ceasing, "My boat, captain? my boat?" But as soon as you leave the water's edge, and enter the house of any European merchant, a mournful silence succeeds to this tumult. The only one of these edifices which is worth the trouble of describing, is, as I have already said, the American hong. It is an immense building, the heavy facade of which, with its five doors, admits to five passages, or, to speak more correctly, five long streets. This ​phalanstery has only two storeys, and its roof, in the form of a terrace, offers to the proprietors a promenade which is more vast, but not more agreeable, than the square, planted with its trees and flowers, which is in front of it. I know nothing in the world so sad as this silent palace. It reminds you of one of those enchanted habitations in which some capricious fairy has imprisoned for centuries some prince who has denied her power. In the long passages, paved with flags of granite—in the vast and airy store-houses with vaulted roof—you never meet a woman or a child; you only see a few men of pale complexion wandering about like shadows, and silently giving orders to yellow-faced, half-naked porters, who in their turn obey without a word. There is but one sound which at intervals cheers the hearts of the unhappy captives, and makes them think of their families, from which they are so far distant, and of the joy of being one day seated before the parental hearth. I mean the sound of the piastres falling into the scales! The silvery sound tells them that the fairy who has them in her power is not inexorable, and that soon the joyful ring will sound the hour of their deliverance.

      The Americans and the English are the real heroes of this century. In going courageously to seek their fortunes in distant lands, they realise the only honourable conquests of the present time, and like all ​men who run great risks, it is not merely the love of money which urges them to these enterprises. These intelligent speculators are not, as is generally thought in France, avaricious usurers; the majority of them are men gifted with powerful minds, and who, in the delicacy of their sentiments, carry us back to the periods of Amadis and Galaor. It was reserved for our witty nation to discover that these courageous merchants, who condemn themselves to a perilous and voluntary exile in order to share the riches acquired by their own labour with some loved one at home, were devoid of all poetic sentiment, and had ingots of gold in place of hearts! I have known a great many of these hardy adventurers, who lived in this commercial Bœotia without complaining that they were not understood by the bankers of their own country, and by the tea-dealers of the Celestial Empire, possessing as their sole consolation in the midst of their irksome labour, the hope that one day they would see again some fair head which was then hidden in some corner of Kentucky, in the mountains of Scotland, or the sweet cottages of Albion. I can affirm that the steamer which brings to those sad edifices, the factories, the European or American mail, distributes almost as many soft protestations and tender oaths as commercial bills and inexorable accounts. And those impassible merchants, who unseal without emotion a missive on which ​sometimes depends their entire fortune, often tremble all over in opening the letter of a young girl, to whom they communicate all their successes. If I had time, I would relate some of these secret histories which have had no witnesses but the cold walls of this severe monument—this commercial monastery—and some English or American cottage, and no intermediaries but some unhappy sheets of paper which arrived at their destination impregnated with marine effluvia, and already several months old! I am sure that these secret dramas, genuine pictures of real life, would be found interesting even after the perusal of our modern novels, whose heroes, in their amorous phrensy, might cleave mountains, rifle pedestrians, and set the universe on fire, in order to obtain their fair one, but who would be incapable of adding up figures and of working like journeymen for her sake.

      The ground floor of each factory is devoted exclusively to store-rooms; beneath the sheds are the scales in which the money is weighed, for it is never counted. The weighing concluded, a Chinese is intrusted to examine the piastres. The operator is generally a quasi-gentleman; a man in a long dress of blue silk, with his pig-tail well plaited, and his head protected by a cap, who sits down with his legs crossed by the side of the balance, and examines one after the other every piece of money. This rival ​of Arcet and Laurent has no need either of a lamp-stove, nor of a coppel in order to test the money; touch, sight, and smell are sufficient for him. The Chinese tester can easily dispense with taste, but the loss of any other sense would render him unfit for his trade. When he doubts the genuineness of a piece of money, he passes it slowly between his forefinger and thumb, examines it with care, smells it, and then placing it on his left thumb-nail, which is inordinately long, tosses it suddenly in the air, and catching it again on this horny projection, listens attentively to the sound. This last experiment is generally decisive, and the piastre is either accepted or rejected. In the former case he marks it with a puncheon, which bears a Chinese character adopted by the merchant who puts it into his coffers. This mark is sufficient to cause the acceptance of the piece by the retail dealers; and when it is thus stamped, if it is afterwards discovered to be false, it can be given back to the last merchant, who has guaranteed its genuineness. But it can be understood to what inconveniences such a system must give rise; those Chinese who are not very scrupulous, imitate the marks of the most honourable English and American houses, and then take them the false money which is thus fraudulently stamped. Then the tester is called for again, and decides finally as to the lawfulness of the demand.

      ​The piastres are sometimes stamped through with such a number of characters that they are quite disfigured, and look like so much metallic lace. But this accumulation of stamps is intended almost always to conceal СКАЧАТЬ