Page:Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China.djvu/827

Rh troops, and found, indeed, that they were rather protectors than oppressors. The pirates of the neighbourhood, who had always been a great scourge, were kept in check, Changchow remained tranquil, and the trade with Formosa was kept up.

Under the treaty signed at Nanking on August 29, 1842, Amoy became one of the five new Treaty ports, and it was stipulated that the island of Kulangsu (as well as Chusan) should continue to be held by Her Majesty's forces until the money payments and the arrangements for opening the ports to British merchants were completed. The question as to which ports should be opened under the Treaty had given occasion for anxious con- sideration to the British Plenipotentiary ; for, outside of Canton, the knowledge of the Chinese coast and the potentialities of the trade-marts was most important. Amoy, how- ever, like Ningpo, was chosen as having been a former seat of European trade. A Spanish Catholic mission f had been estiiblished in Amoy from the early days of the Spanish trade, but the first Protestant missionaries arrived soon after the British taking of the port and installed themselves on Kulangsu. The Rev. W. J. Boone, M.D., and his wife came in 1S42, accompanied by Dr. David Abeel. In 1844 arrived the Revs. E. Doty and W. J. Pohlman, and in the same year the London Mission was opened by the Revs. A. and J. Stronach, who had previously worked among the Chinese in Penang and Singapore, and were thus conversant with the Amoy language. These were the pioneers of the iine work which has since been ex- tended to the whole of the province. Several foreign firms opened here in the early forties ; of these, Messrs. Tait & Co., opened by Mr. James Tait in 1845, and Messrs. Boyd & Co. and Messrs. Pasedag & Co., opened at about the same time, still survive in the port, though the headquarters of the two former houses are now transferred to Formosa. The chief difficulties at the opening were found to be the poverty of the population and the unpro- ductive nature of the hinterland. These were evils which have always militated against Amoy, and it is only the importance which it gained later on as the harbour and entrepot for F'ormosan teas which put it for a time among the larger ports. Another difficulty at the start was the opium ships stationed at Chinchew and Chimmo which acted as competitors with the newly opened port, but these were withdrawn later on and the opium hulks were moored off Amoy Island itself. The British Consul appears to have lived at first on Kulangsu with the garrison and afterwards in what is now the Taoutai's yamen on Amoy ; but, as Michie's " Englishman in China " gives a picture of the first British Consulate on Kulangsu, built by Mr. Alcock in 1844, we may presume that the Consul from that time on lived more or less continuously on Kulangsu, and that such premises as were occupied on Amoy were used for office purposes. The first negotia- tions for a British concession on Amoy took place in 1844, when a site on the sea-shore at E-mng-kang, near what is now the Customs stables, was agreed upon. But the spot was inconvenient and does not seem to have ever been used, and in 1851 the present site was finally settled upon. Kulangsu was evacuated by the British garrison in March, 1845, after the payment t The first Catholic missionaries came in 1589 from Manila, but they were not permitted to remain. Another more successful attempt was made in 1631, from which year dates the establishment of the Spanish mission of the Order of Saint Duminic, which has survived tlirouj*h various vicissitudes and persecutions to the present day. of the fifth instalment of the indemnity. The British Consul who arranged the evacuation was Mr. (afterwards Sir) Ktitlierford Alcock, and his interpreter was Harry Parkes, then a boy of sixteen. These two gentlemen, both bearing names famous in British annals in China, rose successively to be British repre- sentiitives in Peking. Mr. Alcock was only officiating for a few months for Captain Henry Gribble, who held the substantive post and was the first British Consul in Amoy ; Mr. George G. Sullivan was his Vice-Consul, Lieu- tenant Wade, 98th Regiment (afterwards Sir Thomas Wade, Britisli Minister at Pelting) his Interpreter, and Mr. Charles Alexander Winchester his Consular Surgeon. The early days of the Treaty port seem to have gone on qnietly enough till the time of the general upheaval in China caused by the Taeping rebellion. The first signs of unrest on the coast were exhibited at Amoy, where on May 18, 1853, a body of insurgents under the auspices of the Dagger — a branch of the Triad Society, and led by Huang Wei, Huang Teu-mei, and one Magay (so foreigners called him, his Chinese name seems to have been Ma-kin) seized the town, the official resistance being of the weakest description. Magay called himself an admiral, but his experience of warfare, naval or otherwise, seems to have been derived from serving the British garrison at Kulangsu with spirits, and from a brief cruise with a renegade Neapolitan in a lorcha. The rebels held the town until November, when the imperialist forces regained possession. The insurgents fled away to sea, and many succeeded in escaping to the Straits and P'ormosa. Magay fled with the rest, but was accidentally shot off Macao. Foreigners did not suffer during this dis- turbance. They were few in number, and Kulangsu under the protection of British gunboats afforded a safe refuge. The recovery of the city was marked by terrible cruelty on the part of the imperialist forces, who seemed bent on making a wholesale butchery of the population. So horrible were the scenes of slaughter that the foreign residents and a party landed from the liciincs and Bittern intervened to stop the beheading that went on in front of the foreign hongs. The end of the fifties was marked by the Taeping rebellion raging in Mid-China and the second Anglo-Chinese War carrying on its eventful course in the north. But the first reflection in Amoy of these stirrhig events was the establishment of the foreign Customs in 1862. The opening w-as carried out under the direction of Mr. Hart, as he then was, now Sir Robert Hart, Inspector- General of the Chinese Maritime Customs, who visited the port early in that year. The first Commissioner of Customs was Mr. W. W. Ward, who remained until December, 1862, when he transferred charge to Mr. George Hughes, who remained in control of the Ainoy Custotns off and on until March, On October 14, 1864, the port was astounded to hear that the Taeping rebels had captured the city of Changchow. The rebellion was supposed to have been simmering out safely away in the north, and the very existence of rebels in the vicinity was imsuspected. A small party had, it appeared, come overland after the fall of Nanking. There was terrible consternation in Amoy, where the Chinese had no means of resistance, and many natives fled the town. The foreigners and their property were protected by the surveying vessels Sicnllow and Dove, and by volunteers among the residents themselves. Two more gunboats, the Janus and Flamcr, were promptly sent up from Hongkong, and assistance also came from Foochow in the shape of H.M.S. Bustard, under Lieutenant Tucker, four foreign officers, one hundred men, and two guns of the Foochow Franco- Chinese force under Colonel de Mercy. Owing to the fear that they would have to pay for the maintenance of this small force, the local officials showed the strongest hostility to it, and it was obliged to return to Foochow without having been allowed to accomplish anything. Some sixty foreigners of doubtful character arrived on the scene from Shanghai, Ningpo, and Foochow with a view to joining the rebels. Some of these were stopped by their consuls, but some got through to the rebel lines. Raw levies were raised locally by the Chinese authorities, but no delermined efforts were made to oust the Taepings, and had it not been that the movement was in its expiring throes, it would have overcome easily the slender opposition in this district. As it was, however, the rebels remained entrenched in Changchow until April 16, 1865, when they left, unable to resist the disciplined force of eight thousand men brought down from the north. On May 13, 1865, there arrived at Amoy an American schooner naired the General She mum, and among her pas-engers was one Burgevine, the same who was formerly in command of the disciplined Chinese force at Shanghai, and afterwards a leader of the rebels at Soochow. Burgevine had been deported from China thirteen months before by the United States Consul-General at Shanghai. An effort was made to arrest him here, but he succeeded in getting out of the port and was only seized by the Chinese authorities on May 14th as he was on his way to join the rebels at Changchow. He was handed over to the Chinese general, Kuo Sung-ling, and was subsequently sent down to the Taoutai at Amoy. His fate is somewhat mysterious. A mob of rowdies, led by one of Burgevine's compatriots, went to the liai-faiifl-tiiig's yamen, where he was supposed to be confined, and broke it open, only to find that he had already been sent away. The Chinese afterwards reported that he had been accidentally drowned by the capsizing of a boat while on his way to Foochow, an explanation which was, apparently, accepted by the American Government. There is no certain record here of where the capsizing took place, but there is a tradition that it was in the strait between the north of Amoy and the mainland. On March 13, 1865, the British Consul (Mr. W. H. Pedder) accompanied by Mr. Johnston, of Messrs. Tait & Co., Mr. Douglas, a mis- sionary, and Gerard, a storekeeper in Amoy, left in the gunboat Flanier to visit the rebels at Changchow. They were hospitably enter- tained by the rebel leaders, and found five or six foreigners serving in prominent positions among them, under the immediate control of one Rhody, late a colonel and adjutant-general in Colonel Gordon's force. The party brought back with them as a guest, and returned afterwards safely to Changchow, one of the leading rebel chief- tains. This worthy was treated with high distinction, and entertained on H.M.S. Pelorns, on which vessel a visitor recognised in the distinguished guest his former chair coolie in Hongkong. With the close of the Taeping rebellion Amoy entered on a peaceful phase, and its history becomes the story of the development of its foreign trade. Trade. The principal article imported by foreign merchants in the early days of the Treaty