Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/269

Rh and prisoners were purchased outright from the leaders of factions engaged in internecine wars. Depots were established at Macao where the victims were herded under heavy guard until sufficient numbers were obtained for a cargo, when they were crowded into transports and shipped under conditions of misery, filth and brutality which surpassed in atrocity those of the "middle passage," Arriving at their destination, they were sold like cattle to the highest bidders, to enter a servitude which differed from slavery only in being for a limited period, and in the fact that their masters, having no interest in them as property of value, were concerned only to work them under the lash to the extent of their endurance. Those were fortunate whose fate did not land them in the Chincha Islands. Here they were forced to toil under treatment so inhuman that of the four thousand wretches imported from the beginning of the traffic until 1860 not one survived. Those who did not die from the effects of cruelty and exhaustion committed suicide.

The efforts of China to induce the powers to suppress the trade were of course unavailing. There was money in it. But when at length the scandal became intolerable some perfunctory measures were taken by those nations not financially interested, to end, or at least to modify, the worst of its features, and in about ten years they succeeded in making regulations, in concert with the Chinese government, which rendered it unprofitable. But China had gained additional experience of the "foreign devils."

It would be unfair to Portugal to cite her case alone. She is not unique, and far from conspicuous, among those who have proceeded on the assumption that China has no rights which any able-bodied nation is bound to respect. There has been a want of harmony in other matters, but not in this. The helplessness of their victim has made the same appeal to all, and they have responded in a course of brow-beating and bleeding with a unanimity of impulse that is astonishing. The respectable Dutch were early in the game. In 1622, under no pretext of war, nor with better excuse than might ease the conscience of a pirate, they seized the Pescadore Islands, impressed the native inhabitants at the point of the bayonet and compelled them to build fortifications. From this stronghold they ravaged the coast and the Island of Formosa, pillaging and slaying, but, finding it unremunerative, finally wearied and withdrew. The French were less direct in their aggressions and began their spoliation, not in China proper, but in the Kingdom of Annam, where a party of adventurers had gained a foothold in the latter part of the eighteenth century by aiding in the restoration of the deposed Annamese king, Gia Long. In 1859 the murder of a number of missionaries led to the invasion of Annam by the French and the seizure of several provinces. Later, the existence of mineral wealth in Tongking, an ancient dependancy of China, was reported by French