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Read Ebook: Harper's Young People June 1 1880 An Illustrated Weekly by Various
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Ebook has 66 lines and 23313 words, and 2 pages
"Come see--here allee best sampan!"
Frank was confounded by the uproar, and not less so by observing that all the boatmen, and boat-women too , seemed to be exactly alike, so that if he picked one, and happened to lose him, it would be no joke to find him again. As he stood hesitating, a good-looking Chinese girl hailed him from a neat little boat with a staring red eye painted on side of its bow.
"Hi! say! My namee Whampoa Sam; washee, keepee state-loom, row boat, can do all for two bob . Come tly!"
Such a list of accomplishments was not to be resisted, and Austin at once took his seat under the stern awning. The young woman spread her sail, and turned the boat shoreward, steering it with an immense oar.
Away they went, past huge high-pooped junks that looked like monster rocking-chairs; past stately English steamers, beside which the little painted sampans seemed mere toys; past big clumsy rice barges, and trim gigs pulled by sturdy Western sailors. While threading her way through this maze of shipping as dexterously as any seaman, the girl found time to answer Frank's eager questions upon all that he saw, down to the staring eyes on the bow of her boat, which, as she explained, were meant to "help boatee see go straight, allee same man's eye." The mystery of her masculine name, which had puzzled Austin not a little, was also cleared up.
She pushed aside a plank, and hauled out of a box underneath it a little round-faced "four-year-old," so like a big doll that Frank almost took him for one, till he saw the child grasp the steering oar in his little pudgy hands, and actually steer the boat to shore.
"Well," thought our hero, "the Chinese may well be good boatmen, if they begin as early as that."
But he afterward learned that on the great Chinese rivers thousands of families live altogether in boats, each of which has an allotted place of its own. In Canton alone these floating streets have a population of 300,000, and it is common to see two-year-old children toddling about with small wooden buoys on their backs, fixed there by their careful mothers in case they should fall overboard, which they do, on an average, three or four times a day.
For several hundred feet around the great stone quay extended a perfect army of Chinese boats, clustering together like bees; but Mrs. Sam soon made her way through them, and Austin leaped ashore. He had hardly done so when a crowd of sturdy natives surrounded him, with ear-piercing screams, asking if he wished to "ride in chair." This being a new idea, he accepted at once, and presently found himself being carried off in a sedan-chair by four sinewy fellows, who went at a long swinging trot, like the "palanquin hamals" of British India.
Six more runners were speedily added, for the way now led up a street made entirely of stairs, like the "Hundred-and-one Steps" at Constantinople. Then out into the open country, and away toward the summit of Victoria Peak. Up, up, they went, poor Frank getting so bumped about that he was sorely tempted to get out and walk; but he reached the top at last, and saw the whole town, the harbor, and miles upon miles of the inland country out-spread below him like a map. The trip, when paid for, proved wonderfully cheap, though the reason given for this made Frank feel rather "cheap" himself:
As he passed the open window a familiar voice from within caught his ear. It was that of his Captain, who was having a talk with the company's agent.
"Well, there's a young fellow who came out with me, that might do. He's rather young, certainly, but I put him in charge at Singapore, and he did very well. Hello! there he is. Austin!"
Frank entered, cap in hand.
"My lad," said the Captain, "we're sending a cargo of tin and opium to Canton, and you might take it up, unless you'd rather go home."
"All right, my boy. Just look in here to-morrow morning, and we'll arrange it."
Our hero's farther adventures in China--how he succeeded so well with his first cargo as to be at once intrusted with a second--how he received letters from home, reporting all well--how he studied the ins and outs of the "up-country" trade, and the ways of the Chinese, finding both very different from what he had imagined--and how he soon got a good appointment in the office, which he held for several years--would make too long a story to be told here. But he always bore in mind the last words of old Herrick, which were:
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