Free Life and Adventures 1776-1801 by John Nicol Page B

and Onehow we went on shore, one watch one day, the other the next.
    After taking on board as much provisions as we could stow we sailed for China. At the Ladrones, or Mariana Islands, a number of pilots came on board. The captain agreed with one. The bargain was made in the following manner. He showed the captain the number of dollars he wished by the number of cass, a small brass coin, the captain taking from the number what he thought too much, the pilot adding when he thought it too little. He was to pilot the King George to the island of Macau. From thence we sailed up theBocca Tigris to Wampoa, where we sold our cargo of skins. 39 We were engaged to take home a cargo of tea for the East India Company.

8
    China—Manners of the Chinese—
Food—Religion—Punishments—
Evasion of Duty—St Helena—
Author Arrives in England.

    I WAS AS happy as any person ever was to see anything. I scarcely believed I was so fortunate as really to be in China. As we sailed up the river, I would cast my eyes from side to side. The thoughts and ideas I had pictured in my mind of it were not lessened in brilliancy, rather increased. The immense number of buildings that extended as far as the eye could reach, their fantastic shapes and gaudy colours, their trees and flowers so like their paintings, and the myriads of floating vessels, and above all the fanciful dresses and gaudy colours of their clothes—all serve to fix the mind of a stranger upon his first arrival. But upon a nearer acquaintance he is shocked at the quantity of individual misery that forces itself upon his notice, and gradually undoes the grand ideas he had formed of this strange people.
    Soon as we cast anchor the vessel was surrounded with sampans. Every one had some request to make. Tartar girls requested our clothes to wash, barbers to shave the crews, others with fowls to sell; indeed, every necessary we could want. The first we made bargain with was a barber, Tommy Linn. He agreed to shave the crew for the six months we were to be there for half a dollar from each man, and he would shave every morning, if we chose, on board the ship, coming off in his sampan.
    The Tartar girls washed our clothes for the broken meat or what rice we left at mess. They came every day in their sampans and took away the men’s shirts, bringing them back the next, and never mixed theclothes. They all spoke less or more English and would jaw with the crew as fast as any women of their rank in England. They had a cage-like box fixed to the stern of their sampan in which was a pig who fed and fattened there at his ease.
    Our ears were dinned with the cry of the beggars in their sampans, ‘Kamscha me lillo rice’. I have seen the mandarins plunder these objects of compassion when they had been successful in their appeals to the feelings of the seamen. I was surprised at the minute subdivision of their money. Their cass is a small piece of base coin with a square hole in it, three of which are a kandarin; sixty cass one mace; one mace equal to sevenpence English money. The cass is of no use out of the country, and when a seaman changes a dollar he receives no other coin from the wily Chinese.
    I was on shore for a good while at Wampoa, making candle for our voyage home. I had a number of Chinese under me. My greatest difficulty was to prevent them from stealing the wax. They are greater and more dexterous thieves than the Indians. A bam-booing for theft, I really believe, confers no disgrace upon them.
    They will allow no stranger to enter the city of Canton. I was different times at the gate, but all my ingenuity could not enable me to cross the bar, although I was eight days in the suburbs. The Tartars are not even allowed to sleep on shore. They live in junks and other craft upon the river. If employed onshore they must be away by sunset, but may land again at sunrise in the morning.
    The Chinese, I really believe, eat anything there is life in. Neptune was constantly on shore with