Part 25 (2/2)

Neither life nor limb, liberty nor property have any security whatever under the Spanish administration.”

Such was his indictment of Spain.

He began a war for independence from Spain in the provinces of Luzon. He was an inspiring general and practically made prisoners of some fifteen thousand of the Spanish forces. He organized a Government at least nominally Republican, although it has been called a dictators.h.i.+p. The purchase of the Philippines by the United States, in accordance with the Treaty of Paris, has been opposed by Aguinaldo and his followers in a most distressing war. He has claimed the absolute independence of all the Philippines, although, so far as our knowledge goes, his authority does not extend far beyond certain districts of the Island of Luzon.

Without antic.i.p.ating the verdict of history upon our relations to the Philippines, it is enough to add that the bloodshed and suffering caused by this war are most deplorable.

HONG KONG.

HONG KONG and the China Sea have come to stand not only for Europe in Asia, but for America in Asia, though of the latter, Manila is the port.

The center of the world's forces changes, and it is a strange current of events that has made the China Sea, with its English port of Hong Kong, and the Luzon port of Manila, facing each other across the blue ocean way, the pivotal point of not only England in China, but of America in the East. The Anglo-Chinese community in Hong Kong represents the union of Europe and Asia in the family of nations, and America joins the world of the higher civilization at Manila, the scene of Dewey's victory.

The civilizing history of Hong Kong is largely a.s.sociated with Sir John Bowring, whom a large part of the world recalls merely as a writer of popular hymns; as, ”In the Cross of Christ I Glory.”

The British free traders secured Hong Kong as a market for the East, and added it to the British Empire in the middle of the century. The Suez Ca.n.a.l increased the importance of Hong Kong.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hong Kong]

Hong Kong, not being an integral part of Asia, became a place of refugees before its union with the British Empire. It lay in the route of the British possessions in Africa, India, and North America. Its Urasian destiny was seen in the alliance between Europe and Asia concluded at Canton (1634) between the East India Company and the Chinese Government. It then became the vantage ground of the Anglo-Saxon race. The early English Governors of Hong Kong made the port the cradle of liberty and free trade, and a civilizing influence in the East.

The island is some nine miles long and from two to six miles broad, with a population of more than one hundred and twenty thousand, most of whom are Chinese. It was ceded in perpetuity to the British by the treaty of Nankin in 1843, when its Government began to be administered by Colonial Governors, under whom it grew commercially.

The East India Trade Company had prepared the way for this little Britain in the East. The United States in the middle of the century began to trade at Canton from the ports of Boston and Salem. It is a very curious and almost forgotten fact that the first cargoes from New England to Canton consisted largely of ginseng, a plant now little esteemed, but which at that time had acquired such a medical reputation in China as to be almost worth its weight in gold. The plant was held to be a magical cure for nearly all diseases and to possess the gift of immortal youth.

Boston and Salem are still adorned with the tall and stately mansions of these old merchants, whose wooden vessels went to the China Sea, at first carrying ginseng and returning with tea. A writer in a Boston paper thus pictures this period:

”The generation that would not have had to look at a map to find out where Manila was when George Dewey arrived there, is almost pa.s.sed away.

These were the great sailors of their time; men who met emergencies with nerve and overcame tempest and adversity with equal complacency, who knew the merchants of Canton and Calcutta as well as the merchants of Salem and Boston, and whose tempers were never ruffled if even stress of circ.u.mstance compelled them to put up with a paltry profit of one hundred per cent. They lived at a time when there might easily be a fortune in a single freight, and when one turn round the world might represent more than a million of money. Most of them lived before the day of the bill of exchange, and when the solid old method of carrying specie in the hold was the familiar business practice. They knew the pirate of the China Sea and he of Barbary, too, for it was this old-fas.h.i.+oned system of carrying your capital with you that made the pirates' life worth living. They lived before the cable as well, and from the moment that a s.h.i.+p cleared from Canton or Manila or Singapore there was no way in the world for the consignee or the merchant in Boston to know what she had on board until she arrived here to speak for herself. Be it silks or teas or what-not, the merchant must move quickly to bid or buy, for the nature and value of the cargo could not have been discounted in advance, while the s.h.i.+p was skimming the oceans.

Each vessel made her own market, and the wharf was the market place. It was good news, indeed, when a captain with a cargo of teas was informed by his owners, who may have met him upon the completion of a two years'

cruise, that the price of tea had advanced the day before his arrival.

It was pretty apt to be something in the captain's own pocket, too, for in those days he was allowed to carry twenty-five tons of freight for his own private speculation, and a salary of three hundred dollars a month in addition was not uncommon. There are retired captains on Cape Cod and in Salem and in the suburbs of Boston to-day who earned a competence in those times of Boston's water-front prosperity. They became masters sometimes before they were of age, and occasionally there would be one, like the late R. B. Forbes, who would become a great merchant, the head of a famous, wealthy house, known the world over, almost before he realized how great was the fortune that had overtaken him. And there was another very nice thing about those old days of plenty. If a man came home from China rich, invested his wealth in a railroad or some manufacturing or mining project that would be pretty apt to ruin him, all he would have to do would be to exile himself, under the right auspices, for another year or two in China, and then return to his home and friends with his fortunes quite mended.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: Iloilo.]

The great merchant at Canton at the time of the Boston commercial period was Honqua. He was as n.o.ble as he was rich, and Mr. Forbes, the famous old Boston merchant, relates the following story of him:

”A New England trader had gone to Canton, and had been unsuccessful, and owed Honqua one hundred thousand dollars. He desired to return home, but could not do so if he discharged the debt. Honqua heard of his condition, pitied him, and sent for him.

”'I shall be sorry to part from you,' he said, 'but I wish you to return as you so desire, happy and free. Here are all your notes canceled.'”

Here was superb commercialism.

The American sovereignty over the Philippine Islands opens the way to China by the China Sea. In the progress of events the achievements of Magellan have led the s.h.i.+ps of the West to the East again, and it is possible that there may yet be great Mongol emigrations to the western sh.o.r.es of the southern continent. The lantern or farol of Magellan was never more prophetic than now. So suggestion lives.

TRAVELERS' TALES OF THE PHILIPPINES.

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