Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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“A tale unfold, whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul.”

JUNKS IN A CHINESE HARBOUR.

The chief trade of not a few has been, and still is, the traffic of human freight; and it is, unfortunately, only too lucrative. Large numbers of junks leave China for the islands annually packed with men, picked up, impressed, or lured on board, and kept there till the gambier and pepper planters purchase them, and hurry them off to the interior. It is not so much that they usually have to complain of cruelty, or even an unreasonably long term of servitude; their real danger is in the overcrowding of the vessels that bring them. The men cost nothing, except a meagre allowance of rice, and the more the shipper can crowd into his vessel the greater must be his profit. “It would,” says the writer just quoted, “be a better speculation for the trader whose junk could only carry properly 300 men, to take on board 600 men, and lose 250 on the way down, than it would be for him to start with his legitimate number, and land them all safely; for in the first case, he would bring 350 men to market, and in the other only 300. That this process of reasoning is actually put in practice by the Chinese, there was not long ago ample and very mournful evidence to prove. Two of these junks had arrived in the harbour of Singapore, and had remained unnoticed for about a week, during which the owners had bargained for the engagement of most of their cargo. At this time two dead bodies were found floating in the harbour; an inquest was held, and it then transpired that one of these two junks on the way down from China had lost 250 men out of 600, and the other 200 out of 400.”