8 THE CHINESE COLLECTION. come rushing at once on your memory in admirable confusion. Whampoa and the Great Wall; Canton and the Grand Canal; Pekin puzzles, and porcelain vases; with jugglers, ivory balls, vermilion, Confucius, parasols, and summer arbours, Kien-long, pagodas, leaf-gold, and Lord Macartney, will all be flitting through your mind; but sit you down; look for a minute at the company; collect your thoughts, and I promise you a treat that you will not be able to get every day in the year. As you walk through the Exhibition you will be sure to notice the grave-looking Mandarin of the first class, with his state robes stiff with embroidery, and enormous bead necklace. The priests of Fo, or Foh, and Taou; the Tartar archer; the blue nankeen-trousered soldier; the Chinese ladies of rank; the tragedian, whom, on account of his finery, you will put down as a Mandarin at least, or, perhaps, mistake for the Emperor; the juggler, the itinerant barber, the spectacled shoemaker, and the travelling blacksmith; and if you can pass by the Pavilion, the Sedan scene, the lanterns, the model boats and war junks, the screens, porcelain, carvings, paintings, fans, and 66 ten thousand Chinese things" besides, all worth an individual attention, without being abundantly gratified, you must have very unenviable dispositions. Should it be that you happen to think, as hundreds do, that the Chinese are a race of sleek THE CHINESE COLLECTION. 9 headed simpletons, incapable of works of art, the Exhibition will at once reprove and correct you. The proprietor of it has three good things in his possession, good sense, good taste, and a good knowledge of China, to say nothing of his being a man of energy and enterprise, and the owner of the best Collection of Chinese Curiosities in the whole world. CHAPTER II. A RAPID RUN TO CHINA. Set sail. The Channel.-Bay of Biscay.-Madeira. Flying Fish.-A Shark.-A Porpoise.-Speak a Ship.-Pull up a Boat's Crew.- A Water Spout.-The Canaries.-Cape Verd.-The Mauritius.—Penang.-Straits of Malacca.— Chinese Sea. The Thousand Isles.-Hong Kong.-Flotilla of Boats.-Outside Pilot.-Pilot Boat.-Hong Kong Bay. -The Town described.-Vessels. THERE are two ways to not go overland to India. China, even if you do ing the Atlantic, either sail Cape of Good Hope, and crossing the Indian Ocean, or westerly round Cape Horn, and across the Pacific; but there are some reasons why neither of these might, at the moment, suit you, even supposing you would like the voyage. Whether you sail easterly or westerly, in either case you must pay for your passage and your outfit before you go on board, and the amount will be a good round sum. It may, also, be inconvenient to spend so many months on the water, as you must do, if you embark on the voyage, to say nothing of accidents and sea-sickness; but if you A RAPID RUN TO CHINA. 11 will be content to go to China in fancy, and not in reality, all these inconveniences will be avoided. Let me suppose, then, that you are on board the Sir George Staunton or the Trincomalee, and that, having cleared the Channel, and weathered a storm in the Bay of Biscay, you are already arrived at the Isle of Madeira. Again you set sail, your sea-sickness has abated, and you look with delight on the things around you. One day you see flying fish; on another a shark, or a porpoise, is hooked and heaved upon the deck; then you speak a ship bound for Liverpool, and pick up a boat's crew of half-famished seamen who have been wrecked off the Canaries. At last a water spout attracts your attention, and you repeat the lines of poor Falconer, who perished in the mighty deep. "While from the left approaching we descry Let sages versed in nature's lore explain. The horrid apparition still draws nigh, On! on! you go through the world of waters, the wind whistling through the cordage, the tall masts creaking, and the ship ploughing her way 12 THE THOUSAND ISLES. amid the whitening waves. At one time swim ming like a fish and at another seeming to fly like a bird. Oh! there is a strange, a wild, an irrepressible delight in dashing through the foaming billows! Cape Verd is passed, St. now you are buffeting the tempt to double the Cape. Helena is astern, and Again you are on your way. sion to touch at the Mauritius, you have reached Penang; you have run through the Straits of Malacca. You are already in the Chinese Sea. At the entrance of the Canton river the islands are more than you will take the trouble to number; the Chinese call them "The thousand Isles." Many people besides the Chinese have a habit of speaking in round numbers, and not being very precise in their descriptions, as though a hundred or two, more or less, would hardly signify. Hong Kong is one of these "Thousand Isles." Look out sharply a-head on approaching Hong Kong. You will see the land some twenty or thirty miles away, and you will see, also, the water covered with a flotilla of two or three-masted boats, with fore and aft sails made of matting. These are fishing-boats in pairs, dragging a net between each pair. Now you may begin to sketch and make notes, to call forth the wonder and admiration of your friends on your return to Old England. You will soon have an outside pilot alongside |