Page:Englishhistorica36londuoft.djvu/208

 200 THE SUPERCARGO IN THE CHINA TRADE April (Formosa) in 1624, and traded thence to ports in Fukien ; they took interpreters from the Chinese at Batavia who spoke Dutch ; and the French found everywhere friendly missionaries who could interpret for them. The English, coming first in 1637, could have no communication with the Chinese except through an interpreter who knew both Portuguese and Chinese. This was sometimes an untrustworthy Chinese who could speak Portu- guese, sometimes a low-class Portuguese who could speak Chinese, more commonly a half-breed, who had acquired the one tongue from his father, and the other from his mother. 'Under these conditions selling a piece of cloth or buying a bale of silk required only ordinary business acumen ; but the disentangle- ment of difficulties, such as befell every ship, demanded the greatest diplomatic ability in the supercargoes ; and the absence of that ability, and even of honesty and loyalty, in the inter- preters made the difficulties of the supercargoes almost insur- mountable. From about 1690 the English ships obtained much friendly advice and help, in their more serious difficulties, from the French priests. The cordial relations between these priests and the English East India Company were recognized on both sides. The priests were frequently given a free passage to Europe in the Company's ships ; and when the persecution initiated by the Emperor Yungcheng in 1724 drove them from their churches at all places except Canton, Pere de Goville deposited the sum of 10,000 pagodas (£4,500) with the English Company in London, on condition that the Company's agents should pay 600 pagodas a year to the priests in Canton. 1 From about 1715 the Chinese merchants themselves learned the curious patois known as pidgin English ', which thereafter became the lingua franca of the China trade. Selling the ' stock ' carried out from England required but little ability. The law required that not less than one-tenth of the stock carried by each ship from England should consist of goods ' the growth, produce or manufacture of the kingdom ', and until the middle of the eighteenth century no ships going to China could dispose of more than that proportion of English goods. Lead was ' as good as money ', and each ship took usually from 40 to 60 tons of it ; woollen goods were sold with difficulty, without profit, and in small quantities ; and China asked for nothing else that was English. Sometimes, but less often as time went on, ships from England went, on the way out, to Sumatra (Benkulen) or to Borneo (Banjarmassin), and loaded from 50 to 100 tons of pepper for sale in China. Generally speak- ing, however, at the period we are now describing, nine-tenths of 1 Diary of the Council for China, 1702 ; Macclesfield, 1724.