Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/185

 the district was built upon the same plan, but on a larger scale, had a carved and gilt head, bearing some resemblance to that of a tiger, and a stern ornamented with sculpture, and painted with a variety of designs in lively colours. In these boats the principal sitters are generally at the stem, instead of being near the stern, as is the custom of Europe."

Considering themselves to be the most ancient and the most learned of people, the Chinese were too vain to learn from others; they thought they knew more than anybody else, and they think so still; for, having daily before them some of the most magnificent European ships of modern times, they still retain the ancient form of the junk. To a people so fond of money, and so industrious, one would have thought that the fact of such vessels conducting the most valuable trade on the Chinese coast, would have induced them to make some endeavour, by means of shipping better found and better fitted than are any they possess, to retain a trade for centuries originally and exclusively their own.

Nowhere are their failings in this respect better exemplified than in the report of the embassy under Lord Macartney, sent from Great Britain to Pekin in 1792. "It is not uncommon," remarks the writer of this report, "on board Chinese vessels to have maps or sketches of their intended route, with the neighbouring headlands cut out or engraved upon the back of empty gourds, the round form of which corresponds in some sort to the figure of the earth. Such a similitude may have sometimes contributed to render these sketches somewhat less erroneous, but the advantage is accidental, for neither the astro