INUNDATION OF EUROPEAN FACTORIES.

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or the "Hall of Ten thousand years;" the walls and furniture of this temple are yellow, and, at the period when the Emperor's birthday occurs in every year, the viceroy and all the principal officers of Government, both civil and military, assemble there to pay him adoration. The solemnities practised are exactly the same as when he is present. No chairs are allowed; but every one takes with him a cushion, on which he sits cross-legged upon the ground, as the embassy and mandarins did at the imperial feast at Tien-tsin, in 1816.*

Among the most respectable-looking buildings of Canton, inasmuch as the fronts at least are concerned, are the foreign factories, which occupy a very limited extent along the bank of the river in the south-western suburb. The confined state of these, and their utter inadequacy to accommodate an increased number of traders, at the same time that the Government refuses any increase of space, is a subject which must very soon be debated with the local authorities. These factories, together with a large portion of the suburb in which they are situated, are built on a muddy flat, which has been gained from the river, and they are consequently erected upon wooden piles, only just above high-water mark. The heavy rains, during the summers of 1833 and 1834, produced overflowings of the river, which inundated the whole of the European factories to the height of several feet on their ground-floors. Boats plied from door to door along the streets, and from one European residence to another; and a net was seen to be cast for fish in the midst of a Hong merchant's grounds! This was succeeded, as might have been expected, by sickness among the natives and Europeans; and there can be little doubt that, if the inundations frequently recur, the factories, both from that cause and from their * Vol. i. p. 299.

crowded state, will become uninhabitable by the large numbers who are prepared to try their fortunes at Canton. There is no remedy for these evils excepting permission to erect additional factories in a more healthy situation, and beyond the reach of the hightides, which never fail, during the rainy months, to inundate some portion of the space towards the river. The effect of this in a hot climate must, of course, be highly noxious.

The following account of the inundation in 1833 is from the Chinese Repository, published at Canton:- "On the 5th and 6th of September the tide was at the highest, being from four to five feet at the eastern gates of the city, which are above the factories. On the night of the 5th, the weather being calm and serene, the low murmuring of the current, as it rolled along, was distinctly audible in the foreign factories. ****** On the 7th, the water began gradually to abate, but it did not return to its ordinary level until after the 16th, when the spring-tides had passed over. For upwards of a week, during the continuance of the inundation, the current rushed past with such rapidity, that all business with the shipping at Whampoa was entirely stopped; and even light gigs with European crews had the utmost difficulty in reaching Canton. To describe all that has come to our knowledge of the effects of this awful visitation would far exceed our limits." The distress occasioned in the province had a visible effect on the commerce of the European ships, as it lessened at once the demand for imports and the supply of exports. The inundations, so unprecedented in former years, are said to have been occasioned by the neglect of the Government, or its inability, to repair the extensive ravages in the dikes and embankments between Canton and the high country to the north and west; and, as the floods were repeated in 1834,

there is reason to fear their recurrence may be expected.

It may, perhaps, seem incredible that the whole frontage of the buildings, in which foreigners of all nations are shut up together, for the prosecution of their trading business at Canton, does not exceed between seven and eight hundred feet. Each front, of which there are about thirteen, extends backwards about a hundred and thirty yards into a long narrow lane or thoroughfare, on each side of which, as well as over arches that cross it, are the confined abodes of the English, French, Dutch, Americans, Parsees, and others. Many of these spend a large portion, if not the whole, of their lives here in the worship of Mammon, without the sight of a female face, and with no recreation but the jingling of dollars, as they are perpetually being weighed or examined by. the Chinese money-changers, in receipts or payments! Many years back, a considerable number of flags, as the Danish, Swedish, and Austrian, were hoisted in. front of the factories, besides the English, Dutch, and American; but for the last quarter of a century these three, with the French tricolor, which was erected soon after the Revolution of 1830, have been the only foreign ensigns seen there.

The European factories are called by the Chinese "the thirteen Hongs;" the word Hong being always used by them to denote a commercial establishment or warehouse. According to their custom, each factory is distinguished either by some appellation denoting wealth and prosperity, or by its flag. Thus the Austrian or imperial factory was called the "Twin-eagle Hong," a name which it retains to this day; the Danish, the "Yellow flag Hong;" the Company's, "the Hong that ensures tranquillity;" the American, "the Hong of extensive fountains;" and so on. the cast of all there is a narrow inlet from the river,

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---a fetid ditch, which serves to surround a portion of the city wall, as well as to drain that part of the town. This is crossed with a single arch, by a narrow street at the back of the factories, that leads to the warehouses of the several Hong merchants, all of them communicating with the river by wooden or stone stairs, from which the tea and other merchandise is shipped.

The space occupied by the foreign factories is crossed by two well-known thoroughfares, one of them named China-street, and the other very appropriately dignified with the descriptive title of Hog-lane. The former is rather broader than the generality of Chinese streets, and contains the shops of the small dealers in carved and lackered ware, silks, and other articles in common demand by strangers. These are attracted to the several shops by inscriptions in the European character, which sometimes promise more than they perform; as when the dauber of truculent likenesses calls himself a "handsome-face painter," &c. The shops, instead of being set out with the showy and sometimes expensive front of an English or French boutique, are closed in by gloomy black shutters, and very ill lit by a small skylight, or rather a hole in the roof. The inmates, instead of showing the civility and alacrity of shopkeepers in London or Paris, and anticipating the demands of their customers in the display of their goods, slowly, and sometimes sullenly, produce the articles from their cases and cupboards as they may be asked for; so that shopping at Canton is far from being an agreeable pastime.

The alley called Hog-lane it is not easy to describe by any standard of comparison, as we believe that nothing so narrow or so filthy exists in a European town. The hovels by which it is lined are occupied by abandoned Chinese, who supply the poor ignorant

sailors with spirits, medicated to their taste with stimu→ lating or stupifying drugs; and, when the wretched men have been reduced to a bestial state by these poisonous liquors, they are frequently set upon by their wily seducers, and robbed as well as beaten; until those sent in search of the sailors arrive, and carry them to their boat in this disgraceful condition. It was here that the affrays, which many years since so frequently led to homicides and discussions with the Government, in general originated; until the Company's authorities invested the senior commander of the fleet with the complete regulation and control of all boats, with their crews, at Canton. Powerful influence was, at the same time, used to put down the spirit-shops, or bind their owners by heavy pains and penalties to good behaviour.

Those who anciently witnessed the fearful tumults generated in Hog-lane, described them as something quite remarkable. A few straggling sailors, fresh from their ship, in passing a spirit-shop would be greeted by some Chinese with "How you do, Jack?" which would be immediately followed by a general exchange of similar brief and familiar appellatives, as Tom, Bill, and Ned, be the person addressed Christian or Pagan. A pipe and repeated glasses of grog (all on the sailor's side) would immediately follow,with what might be called their ulterior consequences; for when the Chinese at length made their singularly unreasonable demand for payment, as, perhaps, a few dollars for what might be worth a few pence, Jack would have just sufficient reason left to discern the extent of the enormity, without being at all in a condition to meet the case by a logical reductio ad absurdum. The place of reason would therefore be supplied by the fist, or by any thing still harder that chanced to be grasped within it. The Chinese, not unprepared for the emergency, and in full possession of their

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