dore manned his barge, and came himself to pay the Lyra a visit. I should have been very glad to have received him, but Captain Maxwell’s orders against any intercourse being explicit, I could do nothing but decline his civility, and keep him off. In spite of all I could do, however, he rowed alongside, and sent an officer up with his card. This personage, who forced his way on board, addressed me in these words, ‘I come to see about your pigeon.’ – ‘My pigeon,’ said I; ‘I have no pigeons on board, and you must go away – I cannot receive you – go down the side, if you please.’ – ‘No! no,’ exclaimed he, by way of clearing up the mystery, ‘my master, this great Mandarin,’ pointing to his chief, ‘has come to see about the ship’s pigeon.’ While I was puzzling over this speech, I observed the commodore and two or three of his attendants climbing on board the brig, and therefore called out to some of the sailors, ‘Here, my lads, put this gentleman into his boat again.’ In an instant a couple of strapping fellows, who liked no better sport, leaped up, and would have tumbled the poor Chinese over the gangway in a trice, had I not caught their arms. The interpreter, seeing what was going to happen, made a wise and precipitate retreat, dragging the commander-in-chief along with him by the tail, and screaming to the boatmen to shove off.
“I was really extremely sorry to be guilty of such rudeness; but my orders being imperative, I had no other way of resisting such determined intrusion, but that of threatening to throw the foremost of my visitors over-board. I was glad it was not the chief himself who led the way, as I must have used some equally uncivil arguments with him, which I confess would have been a monstrous breach of naval etiquette.
“I afterwards learned that the word ‘pigeon,’ in the strange jargon which is spoken at Canton by way of English, means business, so that what the linguist meant to say was, ‘I am come to see about your business.’ It is, perhaps, not generally known, that all transactions between foreigners, of whatever nation, are carried on here in a singular dialect, called English, but which is scarcely intelligible at first, even to an Englishman, and must be totally unintelligible to every other foreigner. It is made up of English, Portuguese, and Chinese, and although barbarous in the highest degree, must be studied by every trader at the port. Until very lately, all business was transacted by the British Factory in this most absurd language. Of late years, however, the Company’s servants at Canton have made themselves acquainted both with the written and spoken Chinese, and every thing material now passes in the language of the country. The natives themselves, whose principle it is to discourage all assimilation, sometimes lament this newly acquired power of communicating, and look back with regret to the times when the supercargoes drank a great deal of wine, and spoke not a word of their language. ‘Now,’ as I heard one of the Hong merchants say, with a sigh and a shake of the head, ‘the English speak Chinese as well as I do, and drink nothing but water.”
