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very lately, most melancholy and alarming. General D'Aguilar, when commander-in-chief in the colony, predicted the loss, in three years, of a number equal to the strength of one regiment, and his prediction has been almost verified. This sacrifice of human life is fearful to contemplate. The merchant may complain of the dulness of trade in the colony, the political economist may cry out about its expensiveness, but these matters sink into insignificance when compared with such loss of human life.

The question "Why do soldiers suffer more than other men?" naturally presents itself, and I humbly think it is not difficult to answer. They have not the same occupation for the mind as tradesmen, merchants, and others; of excitement they have little or none; day after day the same dull routine of duty has to be got through, and, in addition to this, they are often exposed to the night air. When some of them get an attack of fever, others who look on become nervous and predisposed to disease, and are soon laid up in hospital with their comrades. And add to all these things the effects of the Chinese spirit called "Samshoo," which drives men mad, and, as Captain Massie, of the "Cleopatra," so justly observed in the Supreme Court, "makes bad men of the best in the ship."

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If these are the main causes of fever and death amongst the troops, it surely is not difficult to point out a remedy. The editor of the China Mail' justly remarks that "the climate was blamed for much that arose from a blind adherence to regulations

CHAP. I.

SHANGHAE.

11

as to diet, drill, discipline, and quarters, which, if tried on the civil community, would, in all probability, have produced similar disastrous effects."

It

is satisfactory to observe that now the system of treatment has been completely changed, and apparently with the most satisfactory results. The editor of the paper already quoted observes that General Jervois "has done much to improve the condition of the soldiers, by considering them as men, and not mere machines. They have more freedom, and, it is said, better food and more airy quarters. Something has been done also to relieve the ennui of idleness, by the introduction and encouragement of amusements."* It is to be hoped that these measures will be crowned with entire success, and that the soldiers will soon be as healthy as the rest of the community.

Having nothing to detain me in Hong-kong, I took the earliest opportunity of going northwards to Shanghae. This town is the most northerly of the five ports at which foreigners are permitted to trade, and is situated nearly one thousand miles north-east from Hong-kong. In 1844 I published an account of it in the Athenæum,' and in 1846 I described it more fully in my Wanderings.' In both these works I ventured to point it out as a place likely to become of great importance both to England and America as a port of trade easy of access from the sea. "Taking into consideration its proximity to the large towns of Hangchow, Souchow, and the ancient capital of Nanking; the large native trade; the convenience

* Overland China Mail, June, 1851.

of inland transit by means of rivers and canals; the fact that teas can be brought here more readily than to Canton; and, lastly, viewing this place as an immense mart for our cotton manufactures, there can be no doubt that in a few years it will not only rival Canton, but become a place of far greater importance."

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When these remarks were written the war had just been brought to a satisfactory termination, and the treaty of Nanking had been wrung from the Chinese. The first merchant-ship had entered the river, one or two English merchants had arrived, and we were living in wretched Chinese houses, eating with chop-sticks, half starved with cold, and sometimes drenched in bed with rain. When the weather happened to be frosty we not unfrequently found the floors of our rooms in the morning covered with snow. A great change has taken place since those days. I now found myself (September, 1848), after having been in England for nearly three years, once more in a China boat sailing up the Shanghae river towards the city. The first object which met my view as I approached the town was a forest of masts, not of junks only, which had been so striking on former occasions, but of goodly foreign ships, chiefly from England and the United States of America. There were now twenty-six large vessels at anchor here, many of which had come loaded with the produce of our manufacturing districts, and were returning filled with silks and teas. But I was much more surprised with the appearance which the shore presented than * Three Years' Wanderings in China.

CHAP. I.

ENGLISH TOWN AND SHIPPING.`

13

with the shipping. I had heard that many English and American houses had been built, indeed one or two were being built before I left China; but a new town, of very considerable size, now occupied the place of wretched Chinese hovels, cotton-fields, and tombs. The Chinese were moving gradually backwards into the country, with their families, effects, and all that appertained unto them, reminding one of the aborigines of the West, with this important difference, that the Chinese generally left of their free will and were liberally remunerated for their property by the foreigners. Their chief care was to remove, with their other effects, the bodies of their deceased friends, which are commonly interred on private property near their houses. Hence it was no uncommon thing to meet several coffins being borne by coolies or friends to the westward. In many instances when the coffins were uncovered they were found totally decayed, and it was impossible to remove them. When this was the case, a Chinese might be seen holding a book in his hand, which contained a list of the bones, and directing others in their search after these the last remnants of mortality.

It is most amusing to see the groups of Chinese merchants who come from some distance inland on a visit to Shanghae. They wander about along the river side with wonder depicted in their countenances. The square-rigged vessels which crowd the river, the houses of the foreigners, their horses and their dogs, are all objects of wonder, even more so than the foreigners themselves. Mr. Beale, who has one of

the finest houses here, has frequent applications from respectable Chinese who are anxious to see the inside of an English dwelling. These applications are always complied with in the kindest manner, and the visitors depart highly delighted with the view. It is to be hoped that these peeps at our comforts and refinements may have a tendency to raise the "barbarian race” a step or two higher in the eyes of the "enlightened" Chinese.

A pretty English church forms one of the ornaments of the new town, and a small cemetery has been purchased from the Chinese; it is walled round, and has a little chapel in the centre. In the course of time we may perhaps take a lesson from the Chinese, and render this place a more pleasing object than it is at present. Were it properly laid out with good walks, and planted with weeping willows, cypresses, pines, and other trees of an ornamental and appropriate kind, it would tend to raise us in the eyes of a people who of all nations are most par

ticular in their attention to the graves of the dead.

The gardens of the foreign residents in Shanghae are not unworthy of notice; they far excel those of the Chinese, both in the number of trees and shrubs which they contain, and also in the neat and tasteful manner in which they are laid out and arranged.

The late Mr. Hetherington* was the first to

* Mr. Hetherington fell a victim to a fever of a very fatal kind which prevailed in the autumn of 1848. He was a true specimen of the old English gentleman, and was deeply regretted by all who had the pleasure of knowing him.

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