Page:Through China with a camera.pdf/100

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

and city merchants talking trade in another; and viewed from the cabin-door the whole presents a wonderfully confused per- spective of naked limbs, arms and heads, queues, fans, pipes, and silk or cotton jackets. The owners of these miscellaneous effects never dream of walking about, or enjoying the scenery or sea-breeze. I only once noticed a party of Chinese passen- gers aroused to something bordering on excitement, and it was in this Canton steamer. They had caught a countryman in an attempt at robbery and determined to punish him in their own way. When the steamer reached the wharf, they relieved the delinquent of his clothing, bound it around his head, and tied his hands behind his back with cords : and in this condition sent him ashore to meet his friends, but not before they had covered his nakedness with a coat of paint of various tints.

My readers will remember the celebrated Governor Yeh of Canton, who was carried prisoner to Calcutta. He would almost be forgotten in this quarter were it not for a temple erected to his departed spirit. It may be seen on the bank of a suburban creek ; a very pretty monument it is to remind one of our lively intercourse with the notorious Imperial commissioner in 1857, ^^ intercourse marked by trouble and bloodshed throughout, and which ended in the capture of that unfortunate official in an obscure Yamen.

The Fatee gardens, so often described were still to be found, almost unchanged, at the side of a narrow creek on the right bank of the river. These gardens were nurseries for flowers, dwarf shrubs and trees. Like most Chinese gardens they covered only a small area, and were contrived to represent landscape gardening in miniature. Some distance below the Fatee creek, on the same side of the river, a number of Tea Hongs and tea-firing establishments are to be found. To these I now