Shows how I came to Goblin Market and took a Scunner at it and cursed the Chinese People. Shows further how I initiated all Hong-Kong into our Fraternity

PROVIDENCE is pleased to be sarcastic. It sent rain and a raw wind from the beginning till the end. That is one of the disadvantages of leaving India. You cut yourself adrift from the only trustworthy climate in the world. I despise a land that has to waste half its time in watching the clouds. The Canton trip (I have been that way) introduces you to the American river-steamer, which is not in the least like one of the Irrawaddy flotilla or an omnibus, as many people believe. It is composed almost entirely of white paint, sheetlead, a cow-horn, and a walking-beam, and holds about as much cargo as a P. and O. The trade between Canton and Hong-Kong seems to be immense, and a steamer covers the ninety miles between port and port daily. None the less are the Chinese passengers daily put under hatches or its equivalent after they leave port, and daily is the stand of loaded Sniders in the cabin inspected and cleaned up. Daily, too, I should imagine, the captain of each boat tells his Globe-trotting passengers the venerable story of the looting of a river-steamer — how two junks fouled her at a convenient bend in the river, while the native passengers on her rose and made things very lively for the crew, and ended by clearing out that steamer. The Chinese are a strange people! They had a difficulty at Hong-Kong not very long ago about photographing labour-coolies, and in the excitement, which was considerable, a rickety old war junk got into position off the bund with the avowed intention of putting a three-pound shot through the windows of the firm who had suggested the photographing. And this though vessel and crew could have been blown into cigarette-ash in ten minutes!

But no one pirated the Ho-nam, though the passengers did their best to set her on fire by upsetting the lamps of their opium pipes. She blared her unwieldy way across the packed shipping of the harbour and ran into grey mist and driving rain. When I say that the scenery was like the West Highlands you will by this time understand what I mean. Large screw steamers, China pig-boats very low in the water and choked with live-stock, wallowing junks and ducking sampans filled the waterways of a stream as broad as the Hughli and much better defended as far as the art of man was concerned. Their little difficulty with the French a few years ago has taught the Chinese a great many things which, perhaps, it were better for us that they had left alone.

The first striking object of Canton city is the double tower of the big Catholic Church. Take off your hat to this because it means a great deal, and stands as the visible standard of a battle that has yet to be fought. Never have the missionaries of the Mother of the Churches wrestled so mightily with any land as with China, and never has nation so scientifically tortured the missionary as has China. Perhaps when the books are audited somewhere else, each race, the White and the Yellow, will be found to have been right according to their lights.

I had taken one fair look at the city from the steamer, and threw up my cards. ‘I can’t describe this place, and besides, I hate Chinamen.’

‘Bosh! It is only Benares, magnified about eight times. Come along.’

It was Benares, without any wide streets or chauks, and yet darker than Benares, in that the little skyline was entirely blocked by tier on tier of hanging signs,— red, gold, black, and white. The shops stood on granite plinths, pukka brick above, and tile-roofed. Their fronts were carved wood, gilt, and coloured savagely. John knows how to dress a shop, though he may sell nothing more lovely than smashed fowl and chitterlings. Every other shop was a restaurant, and the space between them crammed with humanity. Do you know those horrible sponges full of worms that grow in warm seas? You break off a piece of it and the worms break too. Canton was that sponge. ‘Hi, low yah. To hoh wang!’ yelled the chairbearers to the crowd, but I was afraid that if the poles chipped the corner of a house the very bricks would begin to bleed. Hong-Kong showed me how the Chinaman could work. Canton explained why he set no value on life. The article was cheaper than in India. I hated the Chinaman before; I hated him doubly as I choked for breath in his seething streets where nothing short of the pestilence could clear a way. There was of course no incivility from the people, but the mere mob was terrifying. There are three or four places in the world where it is best for an Englishman to agree with his adversary swiftly, whatever the latter’s nationality may be. Canton heads the list. Never argue with anybody in Canton. Let the guide do it for you. Then the stinks rose up and overwhelmed us. In this respect Canton was Benares twenty times magnified. The Hindu is a sanitating saint compared to the Chinaman. He is a rigid Malthusian in the same regard.

‘Very bad stink, this place. You come right along,’ said Ah Cum, who had learned his English from Americans. He was very kind. He showed me feather jewellery shops where men sat pinching from the gorgeous wings of jays tiny squares of blue and lilac feathers, and pasting them into gold settings, so that the whole looked like Jeypore enamel of the rarest. But we went into a shop. Ah Cum drew us inside the big door and bolted it, while the crowd blocked up the windows and shutter-bars. I thought more of the crowd than the jewellery. The city was so dark and the people were so very many and so unhuman.

The March of the Mongol is a pretty thing to write about in magazines. Hear it once in the gloom of an ancient curio shop, where nameless devils of the Chinese creed make mouths at you from back-shelves, where brazen dragons, revelations of uncleanliness, all catch your feet as you stumble across the floor — hear the tramp of the feet on the granite blocks of the road and the breaking wave of human speech, that is not human! Watch the yellow faces that glare at you between the bars, and you will be afraid, as I was afraid.

‘It’s beautiful work,’ I said to the Professor, bending over a Cantonese petticoat — a wonder of pale green, blue, and silver. ‘Now I understand why the civilised European of Irish extraction kills the Chinaman in America. It is justifiable to kill him. It would be quite right to wipe the city of Canton off the face of the earth, and to exterminate all the people who ran away from the shelling. The Chinaman ought not to count.’

I had gone off on my own train of thought, and it was a black and bitter one.

‘Why on earth can’t you look at the lions and enjoy yourself, and leave politics to the men who pretend to understand ’em?’ said the Professor.

‘It’s no question of politics,’ I replied. ‘This people ought to be killed off because they are unlike any people I ever met before. Look at their faces. They despise us. You can see it, and they aren’t a bit afraid of us either.’

Then Ah Cum took us by ways that were dark to the temple of the Five Hundred Genii, which was one of the sights of the rabbit-warren. This was a Buddhist temple with the usual accessories of altars and altar lights and colossal figures of doorkeepers at the gates. Round the inner court runs a corridor lined on both sides with figures about half life-size, representing most of the races of Asia. Several of the Jesuit Fathers are said to be in that gallery,— you can find it all in the guidebooks,— and there is one image of a jolly-looking soul in a hat and full beard, but, like the others, naked to the waist. ‘That European gentleman,’ said Ah Cum. ‘That Marco Polo.’ ‘Make the most of him,’ I said. ‘The time is coming when there will be no European gentlemen — nothing but yellow people with black hearts — black hearts, Ah Cum — and a devil-born capacity for doing more work than they ought.’

‘Come and see a clock,’ said he. ‘Old clock. It runs by water. Come on right along.’ He took us to another temple and showed us an old waterclock o............