Four Young Explorers; Or, Sight-Seeing in the Tropics by Oliver Optic (best romantic novels to read .TXT) 📗

talked about the lecture that was not yet finished; and all of them who said anything declared that they were very much pleased with it, and they hoped the remainder of it would be given in the afternoon. Of course all of them had read more or less about China; and while there was much that was new to them, they were glad to have their knowledge of the country revived.

"I have been in Hong-Kong, Canton, and Shang-hai, and I have heard no lecture on board that pleased me more than that to which we listened this forenoon; and I appoint this afternoon at three o'clock for the conclusion of it," said the commander.

At this hour all the company, including the passengers from the Blanche, were in their places; and the speaker mounted the rostrum, apparently as fresh as ever. He was received with as much and as earnest applause as had been given at the end of the second part of his lecture; and with this pleasant approval of his work, he continued his discourse.

"According to the accounts of all recent travellers, the roads of China are in a villanously bad condition, and there are no railroads worth mentioning,"[311] he began. "And yet the necessity of good common roads was apparent to the ruler, even before the building of the Great Wall, and twenty thousand of them have been constructed; but the Chinese, having finished a great work, do not meddle with it again. The roads have never been repaired thoroughly, and that accounts for their present condition. The rivers and canals furnish the principal means of communication, though the roads are still used.

"The dress of the poorer classes is very much the same for both sexes. It is regulated by sumptuary laws for all classes; but it is varied by the wealthy in the use of costly material, and the ornaments they add to it. You have all seen Chinamen enough in the streets of New York and other cities, and the dress they wear is about the same as that worn in their native land. The queue is the most notable thing about them. This was not the ancient custom of wearing the hair, but was introduced and enforced by the Manchu rulers over three hundred years ago, when it was considered a degrading edict; though now the Chinaman sticks to his queue with as much tenacity as he does to his very life.

"The small feet of the women, even of the highest class, is quite as notable as the queues. This species of deformity was not required by the Manchus, for they wore their feet as God gave them; and it is not an ancient custom, for it has prevailed only from the sixth century of our era. Nature's growth[312] is checked by tightly bandaging the feet in early childhood, subjecting the victim to severe pain and discomfort. But you will see the women for yourselves, and can judge of the effect upon them. The very poor and those in menial conditions are not necessarily subjected to the torture, but fashion carries even many of this class into the custom. Small but natural feet are the pride of our young ladies, and some of them complain that when the feet were given out they got more than their share.

"The sexes are kept apart until marriage; and this has been a social feature from the earliest time. Girls and boys in the family did not occupy the same mat or eat together from the age of seven, and when the former were ten they ceased to appear outside of the women's apartments. Girls were taught manners therein, to handle the cocoons, to do all the work appertaining to the manufacture of silk and the details of Chinese housekeeping. This was in the feudal time; and the females were not instructed in book-learning, and are not now, though they pick up something of an education, and learned women are not unknown, even those who have written books.

"In regard to marriage, the parents have entire control, and professional match-makers are an institution. It is to a great extent a matter of horoscopes. Usually the bride and groom have not seen each other till the marriage ceremony, and of course they lose all that delightful period which precedes[313] the event. But they appear to take to each other when brought together, and to be happy as man and wife. Though the man has one legal wife, there is no law or custom to prevent him from taking half a dozen more secondary wives.

"There are seven lawful grounds for divorcing a wife from her husband,—disobedience to her husband's parents; failure to give birth to a son; dissolute conduct; jealousy of her man, especially in regard to the other wives; talkativeness; thieving; and leprosy. I will leave the ladies to make their own comments. There are three considerations which may set aside these reasons for divorce,—that her parents are no longer living; that she has passed with her spouse through the years of mourning for his parents; and that he has become rich after being poor. The children are often affianced in childhood, and probably this fact furnishes many of the grounds for proceedings in the divorce court.

"Infanticide is not an uncommon crime in China, female children being almost always the victims. Probably its prevalence is somewhat exaggerated. It is among the poorest class that this atrocity prevails, the universal desire for male children, in connection with the ancestral worship of the people, being the root of the evil. Public opinion is against the practice, though not as decidedly as might be wished.

"The complexion of the Chinese is yellowish, as you have seen in our streets; and from the extreme[314] north to the Island of Hainan, they all have long black hair, almond or oblique eyes, high cheek-bones, and round faces. They are greatly addicted to opium and gambling wherever you find them. Dr. Legge says that the longer one lives among them the better he likes them, and the better he thinks of them; but we are not likely to be able to test the correctness of this remark.

"The Chinese bury their dead in graves in the form of a horseshoe, and with an almost infinite variety of ceremonies and sacrifices. Where the friends are able to pay the expense, the last rites are ostentatious and very costly. You may chance to see something of them before you leave the country. When a very rich Chinaman travels, he takes his coffin with him.

"They have no day in the week corresponding to our Sunday, but they have an annual universal holiday at New Year's. It is a season of rejoicing and festivity all over the country. Stores are closed for several days, and the government offices are shut up for a month. The people 'dress up,' and the temples are visited, the gambling resorts are in full blast, and crackers and other fireworks make Fourth of July of the season.

"There is some sort of a festival every month, such as the 'Feast of Lanterns,' on the full moon, of the tombs, 'Dragon Boats,' and 'All Souls,' in honor of departed relatives, when the supposed hungry spirits from the other side of the Styx are fed[315] at the cemeteries. The people are extravagantly fond of theatricals; and a kind of bamboo tent is erected for the performance, which is usually of inordinate length. Females, as in India, do not appear on the stage.

"It would be quite impossible for me to follow the consecutive history of China from 2637 b.c. down to the present time; it would be an infliction upon you, and I shall only mention some of the principal events. Our authority in these remarks numbers the Chinese army at three hundred and fifty thousand; the Year Book makes it double this number. Judged by a European standard, it does not amount to much outside of mere numbers; though in addition to it there is a sort of militia, camped in the several provinces, more in the nature of police than soldiers, of twice as many men as the imperial army.

"The first great war in China was the Tâi-Ping rebellion, which the older of you can remember. It began in 1851, and was continued for nearly twenty years. Its leader was Hung, a poor student, who studied up a new religion, which was certainly an improvement upon those of the people, for it recognized the Great God, and Christ as the Elder Brother. A strict morality and the keeping of the Sabbath were required of its adherents, and idolatry and the use of opium were forbidden.

"Hung incited the rebellion; and its object was to overturn the ruling dynasty of the Manchus, and[316] place himself on the throne. It was at first very successful in its progress, and it looked as though the imperial cause was doomed. In 1855 the rebels, for the want of sufficient re-enforcements in an attempt to capture Pekin, were compelled to retreat to Nanking, and then the decline of the insurrection began. A body of foreigners under an American by the name of Ward joined the imperialists, and rendered important service; but he was killed in battle in 1862. He was succeeded by one of the subordinates, who became General Burgevine; and he was quite as successful as General Ward had been. The new general fell out with the government, and retired. By the influence of British residents at Shang-hai, who had organized an effective army, General Charles George Gordon, of whom you heard in Egypt, was placed in command. He captured Nanking, and the rebellion was suppressed in 1865.

"You have been informed of the movements of the Portuguese, English, French, Dutch, and Spaniards to obtain territory in the East from 1497, when Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope. All of them established colonies; and in 1516 they began to send their ships to China, whose people did not receive them kindly. This was in the early days of the Manchu rulers, who claimed to be superior to all other monarchs on the face of the earth; they would not acknowledge the visitors as their equals, and regarded them as vassals.

"When the Chinese ruler learned of the conquests[317] of those from the West he tried to prevent their approach to his dominions. But trade had been established; and the opium traffic had its birth, and the people were crazy to procure and smoke it. This was the cause of the wars between China and England and France, with the vassal question. In 1800 an edict of the emperor prohibited the importation of opium into his dominions.

"England before this had entered upon the task of making a treaty to settle the relations between the two countries; but no treaty was made, and the smuggling of opium continued for many years. In 1816 another embassy went to Pekin; but it was summarily and contemptuously dismissed because the ambassador refused to go through the ceremony of repeatedly prostrating himself before the emperor, and acknowledging his own sovereign as a vassal of the emperor.

"The trade went on after India passed to the government of England. China was still obstinate, insisted upon the vassalship of the Western nation, and was confident in her power to repress the opium trade. The merchants pressed vigorously for the enlargement of their trade with China, which did not seem to be aware of its weakness before a European power. A famous mandarin was appointed governor-general of the Kwang provinces to bring the barbarians to their senses. He proceeded in earnest, and England declared war against the country in 1840. The result was evident from the first, and[318] the war ended with the peace of Nanking in 1842. The items were the ceding of Hong-Kong to the victor, the opening of five ports to the trade and residence of the British. Correspondence was established between the officials of the two nations; but not a word was said about opium, and the smuggling went on as before.

"In 1857, after some troubles in Canton in which the English were at fault, and the refusal of the governor-general to meet an agent of the British government, the latter declared war again, with France as an ally. Canton was captured the same year; and Yeh, the governor, was taken prisoner, and sent to Calcutta. There was little fighting in this war; and Canton being in possession of the allies, a joint commission, attended by representatives of the United States and Russia, proceeded to Pekin to make their demands upon the emperor. A treaty was made at Tien-tsin, confirming the former, and with many important articles. One provided for the appointment of ambassadors by each nation, another for the protection of Christian missionaries, and several others of less moment.

"It looked as though the Chinese emperor had been sufficiently humiliated; but the treaty 'slipped up,' for its last clause provided that the treaty should be ratified at Pekin within one year. The emperor could not abide the idea of permitting the ambassadors to enter the sacred capital, and he looked about him for the means of escaping the issue. The forts[319] between the capital and the Gulf of Pe-chi-li had been rebuilt and were well