CHINA 
 
 AND 
 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Rev. WILLIAM SPEER, 
 
 MISSIONARY TO THE CHINESE IN CALIFORNIA. 
 
 AN ARTICLE FROM THE PRINCETON REVIEW 
 OF JANUARY, 1853. 
 
 =rrc)> 
 
CHINA 
 
 AND 
 
 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Eev. WILLIAM SPEER, 
 
 MISSIONARY TO THE CHINESE IN CALIFORNIA. 
 
 AN ARTICLE FROM THE PRINCETON REVIEW 
 OF JANUARY, 1853. 
 
5 
 
CHINA AID CALIFORNIA. 
 
 The discoverers of the American continent in the fifteenth 
 century were entranced, when they landed on its eastern coast, 
 to find here what appeared a land of boundless wealth in the 
 precious metals, and in its agricultural productions; inhabited by 
 a people of gentle, poetic and luxurious manners, only empur- 
 pled and enervated by the tropical sun. And scarce less sur- 
 prised were our brethren that have pushed our empire to the 
 Pacific shores, to be at once met on that opposite extreme by 
 unexpected descendants of the same division of the human fam- 
 ily, the emigrant Chinese. The Indian and the Chinaman are 
 and are not the same. The progenitors of our aborigines were 
 doubtless portions of the maritime population of the Asiatic 
 coast, cast hither by the currents and winds of the ocean, 
 some, perhaps, as the Tartar traditions affirm, on cakes of ice ; 
 while Long Achick and his celestial companions step ashore 
 in satin shoes with white soles of paper, and float through the 
 streets of San Francisco in gowns of silk, waving their fans 
 painted with extracts from poets and philosophers more ancient 
 than Chaucer and Pelagius, and erect with the port of intelli- 
 gence, refinement and enterprise. And now, when the people 
 of California have compared the Chinaman with his brother, 
 the wretched Rootdigger, or the savage Camanche, they have 
 found him as different as the modern Louis Napoleon from the 
 ancient Dumnorix, or as the astronomer Arago from the druid 
 Divitiacus. They have found him a gentleman in his address, 
 a scholar in his own polished and immense literature, every 
 
4 
 
 whit as cunning a trader and as acute a diplomatist as the 
 Yankee : in fine he is the " Yankee of the East." 
 
 The question is asked with wonder, whence came these men? 
 We reply, from an empire as ancient as that of Nineveh, as 
 civilized as that of Egypt, as wealthy and as controlling in the 
 politics of mankind as Great Britain ; one that has stood from 
 an early period after the deluge, almost unknown to the fickle 
 history of all the nations with which we have been acquainted, 
 but ever-augmenting, till it is now the most populous that ever 
 existed, and covers an area greater by one half than the whole 
 continent of Europe. 
 
 Western nations claim to have discovered America some 
 three hundred and sixty years ago. But there is every reason 
 to believe that it was subjects of the Chinese Empire, either 
 Tartars or Chinese, that first disturbed its vast solitudes with 
 the sounds of the human voice, and who planted on its soil im- 
 perishable monuments of human industry. Place the newly- 
 arrived Chinaman and the Indian side by side, and you observe 
 the same complexion. Listen to the tongue of the latter, and 
 while most of the dialects have partaken more of the Tartar 
 original, a Chinese element also may be traced. For instance, 
 the Otonic language, which covered a wider territory than any 
 other but the Aztec among the nations of the Western part of 
 our continent, is said to exhibit a remarkable affinity to the 
 Chinese, both in its monosyllabic structure, and in its general 
 vocabulary. 
 
 If it be asked, how the Orientals could have first reached 
 this country, a high American authority [Redfield] says : " A 
 knowledge of the winds and currents of the Pacific Ocean will, 
 I am convinced, serve to remove all mystery and all doubt 
 from the once vexed question of the first peopling of its islands 
 from the Asiatic continent, and in spite of the long urged ob- 
 jection of the opposition of the trade-winds. A case is still 
 recent where the wreck of a Japanese junk was drifted the en- 
 tire distance to the Sandwich Islands, with its surviving crew ; 
 thus completing nearly half of the great circuit of the winds 
 and currents in the North Pacific. But we shall find an addi- 
 tional means of transport near the Equator, which is afforded 
 in the north-west monsoon of the Indian and Pacific oceans, 
 
5 
 
 and which is found, according to my inquiries, to extend at 
 one portion of the year as far eastward as the Society Islands, 
 or more than half the distance from the Indian Ocean to the 
 coast of South America." Indeed, when we consider the 
 countless fleets of vessels, of every description, that checker 
 the Chinese seas, it would be wonderful if some of them, by the 
 frequent storms and the great current which precipitates the 
 Northern Pacific upon the American coast, were not landed 
 here; and equally wonderful if some, by the great counter cur- 
 rent and trade-winds of the tropical zone, did not bear back 
 tidings of the new world. 
 
 That the Chinese had propagated their race and their char- 
 acteristics on this shore of the separating ocean, is the opinion 
 of many men of research. Dr. J. Pye Smith quotes with ap- 
 probation the opinion expressed in the Encyclopedia Britan- 
 nica, that " there are traits of resemblance in the manners, 
 laws, arts, and institutions of the Chinese and Peruvians, 
 which in our opinion are too numerous, striking, and peculiar, 
 to be the effect of chance." 
 
 The period when this continent was peopled may for ever 
 remain a secret. If solved, it must be from the historic re- 
 cords of the Oriental nations, probably from those of China, 
 which, besides its comparative propinquity, possesses the most 
 ancient and perfect of uninspired traditions. When we ex- 
 amine Chinese history, we discover descriptions of a great land 
 far to the eastward, across the "Great Ocean," which the 
 Jesuits and other interpreters of that difficult literature believe 
 afford proof that California was known to that people for at 
 least a thousand years before its discovery by the Spanish. 
 The following, a short chapter from the Yuen-kien-liii-han, a 
 Chinese Encyclopedia, is a specimen of the accounts supposed 
 to refer to America. It is contained on the 44th and 45th 
 pages of the 231st volume : 
 
 "Fusang. The historians of the South mention the coun- 
 try of Fusang. They state, that in the first year of Wing- 
 yuen of the Tsi dynasty [about A. D. 499, according to the 
 tables of M. Pauthier,] several of its learned Shaman priests 
 arrived at Hing-chau. These men reported that Fusang lies 
 
6 
 
 east of Ta-moh, at the distance of twenty thousand li. [Ta- 
 moh is described as a nation twelve thousand U eastward from 
 Japan.] Their land is east from the middle kingdom [China]. 
 Its territory is great. The name is derived from the fusang 
 wood. The leaves of the fusang are like those of the tung ; 
 when first produced they resemble sprouts of bamboo. The 
 inhabitants eat the fruit like pears, and weave its bark into 
 cloth for clothing, and for articles of embroidery. They have 
 no extensive cities [or 'cities with suburbs,' as Medhurst else- 
 where translates the same phrase.] They have books, which 
 are written upon the bark of the fusang. They possess no 
 armed soldiery, and do not dare to make battle. 
 
 "According to the laws of the country there is instituted a 
 northern and a southern prison. Persons guilty of light 
 offences are committed to that at the south: those guilty of 
 the more weighty ones to that at the north. There may be 
 pardon and release from the southern prison, but none from 
 the other. The males and females in it are, however, allowed 
 to intermarry; though their male children are sold into slavery 
 at eight years of age, and their females at nine. The corpses 
 of prisoners are not permitted exit. When a man of rank is 
 guilty of a crime, the men of the nation hold a great council. 
 The offender eats and drinks before them. When condemned 
 they bid him farewell like a dying man, and retire. Then a 
 circle is drawn around him with ashes. Thus, if the crime be 
 of a low grade, himself alone is cut off from intercourse with 
 society : if greater, he and his children and grand-children : if 
 of the highest degree of heinousness, his descendants are in- 
 cluded to the seventh generation. The name of the king is 
 Yih-hi. The nobility are entitled first, the Tui-lu; second, 
 the inferior Tui-lu; third, the Na-tuh-sha. When the King 
 travels he is attended by preceding and following drums and 
 horns. The royal apparel is changed according to the year. 
 In every ten, during the first two it is green ; during the next 
 two, red; in the third two, yellow; in the fourth two, white; 
 and in the last two, it is black. Carriages are used, with 
 horses, oxen and deer. The people of the country raise deer 
 to ferment spirits out of the milk, [as do the Tartars.] Red 
 
7 
 
 pears grow there, which keep sound the year through. Reeds, 
 or watergrass, are abundant; they have peaches also. There 
 is no iron ; but they possess copper. They do not esteem gold 
 and silver. When marriage is contemplated, the lover goes to 
 the residence of the lady, erects a cottage near it, and waits, 
 [or, in the Chinese, "sprinkles and sweeps"] for a year. If 
 she be not pleased in that time she drives him off; but if 
 mutually satisfied, the ceremonies are concluded. At an early 
 era Buddhism did not exist in that country ; but in the second 
 year of Ta-ming, of the Sung dynasty [about A. D. 459] 
 five pl-keu, or mendicant priests, from Kipin, [in Tartary,] 
 went there and distributed Buddhist tracts and images among 
 the inhabitants. Their customs have in consequence been 
 changed." 
 
 The name Fusang is not of Chinese origin. It was pro- 
 bably obtained from the natives of the country, or was given 
 to it by the Japanese, a people, says Bradford, in his valuable 
 work on American Antiquities, whose commerce once extended 
 from the Indian Archipelago to the shores of North America, 
 "with which they were acquainted under the name of Fou- 
 sang." 
 
 A critical examination of the whole of this remarkable pas- 
 sage reveals but few points of difference between the people of 
 Fusang and what the Toltecs and Aztecs were, or might have 
 been three and a half centuries ago. The Chinese historian 
 depicts a peaceful people, it is true, with few arms; but such 
 were the Toltecs before the rise of the Aztec power. The 
 principal discrepancy is in the assertion that there were 
 wheeled vehicles used with horses, oxen, or deer, since the use 
 of these domestic animals was probably unknown on this conti- 
 nent. Yet on the other hand, the Tartar nations to the north 
 of China cannot be intended, as carriages of any kind were 
 equally unused by them. 
 
 The reasons for applying this narrative to the people of 
 ancient Mexico are numerous and weighty. It purports to 
 have been derived from several Shaman priests, who came to 
 China in the year 499 of the Christian era. The astonishing 
 analogies between the Aztec religion and the Buddhist might 
 
8 
 
 justify those who have pronounced them the same. They re- 
 sembled each other in their primary ideas of the Divine Being, 
 of good and evil spirits, of the depravity of matter, and of the 
 transmigration of the soul ; in their general use of monastic 
 forms and discipline; in their penances, ablutions, almsgivings, 
 and public festivals; in the worship of their household gods; 
 in the devotion of the priests to the studies of astrology and 
 astronomy; in the admission of virgin females to the vows and 
 rites of the cloister; in some of the titles and functions of dif- 
 ferent prominent deities ; in the incense, liturgies, and chants 
 of their worship ; in their use of charms and amulets ; in some 
 of their forms of burial, or burning the dead, and the preserva- 
 tion of the ashes in urns ; and in the assumption of the right 
 to educate the youth. So the Chinese might justly have 
 classed the Aztec priesthood with the Buddhist, that before 
 the fifth century had extended their idolatrous toils over all 
 Eastern Asia. 
 
 Fusang is described in the Chinese narrative as an extensive 
 country, eastward of Japan, at the distance of about nine thou- 
 sand miles. Only the Aleutian and Sandwich Islands lie in 
 that direction short of our own continent, which is not far from 
 that number of thousand miles distant ; a remarkable approxi- 
 mation to the truth, when we remember the imperfection of the 
 art of navigation in China. The use by the Aztecs of the bark 
 of various trees for cloth and for paper; their possession of a 
 hieroglyphic system of writing, and of a great number of writ- 
 ten volumes, so that the Spaniards have testified that " moun- 
 tains of them" were heaped up and burnt, after the conquest; 
 their skill in embroidery, and the severity of their punish- 
 ments, are noticed alike by the European and Chinese au- 
 thors. 
 
 There are several additional points which deserve particular 
 observation. First, the abundance of the peach and pear, 
 which do not flourish northward of China on that continent, 
 whose seeds were probably transported hither from China; in 
 the ballads of whose poets they are introduced eleven hundred 
 years before the commencement of our era. Second, there is 
 no feature of our California scenery more noticed by the tour- 
 
9 
 
 ist, than the vast marshes of the tule, or reeds, -which line the 
 shores of the Sacramento and Joaquim rivers, and the bays by 
 which they debouch into the ocean. The tule" seems to nearly 
 correspond with the Chinese po, which is probably the reed or 
 water-grass, of the species typha, commonly called reed-mace, 
 or cat-tail. Third : it is specified in the Chinese account, that 
 the criminal on trial eats and drinks in the presence of his 
 judges. Of the Aztecs, the historian Prescott says, "the 
 judges wore an appropriate dress, and attended to business 
 both parts of the day — dining always for the sake of despatch 
 in an apartment of the same building where they held their 
 session; a method of proceeding much commended by the 
 Spanish chroniclers, to whom despatch was not very familiar in 
 their own tribunals." Fourth: the abundance of copper, and 
 the want of iron is mentioned ; while it is said, " they did not 
 esteem silver and gold." Here again we notice a strange co- 
 incidence. " The use of iron, with which their soil was impreg- 
 nated, was unknown to them. They found a substitute in an 
 alloy of copper and tin; and, with tools made of this bronze, 
 could cut the hardest metals" and stones. The extraordinary 
 assertion that they "did not esteem silver and gold," meets its 
 parallel in the enumeration of the revenue of the Aztec em- 
 peror, where the American historian says: "In this curious 
 medley of the most homely commodities and the elegant super- 
 fluities of luxury, it is singular that no mention should be made 
 of silver, the great staple of the country in later times, the use 
 of which was certainly known to the Aztecs." Perhaps a 
 thousand years earlier, gold may have been similarly unno- 
 ticed, or uncoveted. 
 
 Now, when we sum up all these correspondences of Chinese 
 and Spanish history, does it not seem probable, that the people 
 of the East were acquainted with this antipodal continent at, 
 or previous to, the close of the fifth century; that is, in the 
 days of the emperor Justinian, before the overthrow of the 
 Roman Empire, and ten centuries before the flag of Spain or 
 England was lifted upon it by Christopher Columbus, or Sebas- 
 tian Cabot? 
 
 A final and more complete argument might be presented if 
 time permitted, from a general survey of the Aztec civilization, 
 2 
 
10 
 
 and a comparison of it -with that of the Chinese. The Span- 
 ish priest or soldier who crossed the Pacific from the ancient 
 empire of the East, to its counterpart in the West, when he 
 walked its fields might have beheld the same respect paid to 
 agriculture as a profession, the same dependence of govern- 
 ment on the products of the soil chiefly for its revenue, and 
 the payment of taxes in kind ; also similar modes of irrigation 
 to increase the yield of the earth, and large public granaries in 
 which the excess of the luxuriant harvest was deposited for 
 years of drought and famine. In the place of trade he would 
 have seen the same association of merchants and mechanics 
 into powerful guilds for the protection of their privileges and 
 their prices. In the street the coolies bore the burthen that 
 belongs to the horse or the ass; and there were no wheeled 
 carriages. The soldier strutted by him in armour of quilted 
 cotton, holding the bow and arrows. In the workshop he 
 would have been delighted by the same dazzling exhibition of 
 fine porcelain, of lacker work in wood, of cotton cloth, and of a 
 species of silk spun from a worm, of precious stones skilfully 
 cut and polished, and of different metals splendidly enchased. 
 About the abodes of wealth he would have wandered in bril- 
 liant gardens, containing collections of plants never excelled by 
 any in Europe, adorned by sparkling pools, and airy pavilions, 
 whose graceful pillars were inscribed with poetic or fanciful 
 quotations. Within those abodes he would have witnessed the 
 same regulation of marriage, one proper wife with an unlimited 
 number of inferiors in concubinage ; the same jealous separation 
 of males and females at their meals, and the same frivolous em- 
 ployment of highborn females in the arts of embroidery, music, 
 gambling and the toilet. Did he mingle in the social life of 
 the Aztecs, the abundance of sweetmeats at their feasts and 
 the succeeding exhibitions of plays and juggling, the ceremo- 
 nious gifts, the use of snuff, and the peculiar mode in which the 
 smoke of tobacco was inhaled into the lungs, might have 
 cheated him into the belief that he enjoyed the hospitality of 
 some mandarin of Kwang-tung. Should he converse with a com- 
 pany of students, their attention to astrology, their use of a 
 hieroglyphic and ideographic system of characters in writing, 
 the amazing resemblance of the calendar, and the principle of 
 
11 
 
 the annotation of time, which has heen so much remarked by 
 the learned of Europe, nay, even as minute a circumstance as 
 the mode of preserving their books, not in scrolls, but in alter- 
 nate fanlike folds, would have confirmed his delusion. And 
 how would he have accounted for some things still more con- 
 founding, such as that remarkable usage, common to the Chinese 
 and Aztec emperors, of appointing stated days for the public 
 assemblage of their courts to hear something like a hortatory 
 moral discourse addressed to them ; or such an institution as 
 the establishment of public literary examinations of prose and 
 poetical compositions, and the bestowment of prizes and rewards 
 to successful candidates? 
 
 How can we interpret coincidences so universal, so minute, 
 and so remarkable, save by the presumption of a common ori- 
 gin of the customs, the arts, and the religious institutions, of 
 the Chinese and Aztec nations ? And further, is it not probable 
 from this extraordinary retention of the filial form and feelings, 
 that subsequent to the original colonization there were occasional 
 intercommunications between the separated families ? And still 
 again, why should it then be thought incredible that the Chinese 
 Fusang is indeed the American California, and that the Ori- 
 ental discoverers have higher rights and honours, by ten centu- 
 ries, vested in this soil, than any nation of Europe ? 
 
 Our attention has been directed to the question of the first 
 peopling and occupation of the American continent, as one of 
 considerable interest ; since both the "Welsh claims in behalf of 
 their prince Macloc, and the more reliable traditions of the voy- 
 ages of the Northmen in the eleventh century, may both have 
 to yield the point of honour to that people who long anticipated 
 us in the discoveries of printing, the mariner's compass, and 
 gunpowder, the primary instrumentalities of modern literature, 
 commerce, and war. 
 
 Let us turn now, in the second place, to the more practical 
 inquiry, what are the advantages we may expect to accrue from 
 the influx of this remarkable people ? The tide of emigration 
 across the Pacific is becoming so enormous as to arrest universal 
 attention. In the year 1848, two men and one woman arrived 
 from China. In the months of June and July of the present 
 year, there were landed, 11,025 men, and 15 women. And it 
 
12 
 
 is calculated that at the close of 1852, there was a Chinese 
 population of near 50,000. 
 
 There are many that will not welcome the Chinese. It is a 
 serious question, how we shall receive this new element in our re- 
 publicanism ; we are brought so near to empires so ancient and 
 vast, to populations so immense, long civilized, and willing to 
 emigrate ; a commerce so valuable ; industry so cunning and 
 persistent; and politics and religious sentiments so opposite to 
 ours. It is a question of sublime importance. Mr. Seward's 
 words on this subject are, " Even the discovery of this conti- 
 nent and its islands, and the organization of society and govern- 
 ment upon them, grand and important as these events have 
 been, were but conditional, preliminary, and ancillary to the 
 more sublime result, now in the act of consummation — the re- 
 union of the two civilizations, which, parting on the plains of 
 Asia four thousand years ago, and travelling ever afterward in 
 opposite directions around the world, now meet again on the 
 coasts and islands of the Pacific Ocean. Certainly, no mere 
 human event of equal dignity and importance has ever occurred 
 upon the earth. It will be followed by the equalization of the 
 condition of society, and the restoration of the unity of the 
 human family." 
 
 In touching at the ports of the populous countries between 
 India and China, and the beautiful islands of the Indian Archi- 
 pelago, there is nothing the voyager is more impressed with 
 than the superiority of the Chinese to all other races there, save 
 only the Anglo-Saxon. Were the question of encouraging their 
 emigration put to men of intelligence and enlarged views, such 
 as Sir James Brooke, or Sir Henry Pottinger, or the late 
 esteemed American consul at Singapore, Mr. Ballestier, or 
 should we consult the testimonies of such men as Sir Stamford 
 Baffles, or Mr. J. Hunt, it would not long remain without an 
 affirmative. Every one that has marked the course of European 
 colonization in the East, must have remarked the eagerness to 
 secure and increase the influx of Chinese settlers and traffic. 
 The English, especially, have learned the sympathy between a 
 flourishing commerce with China, and the prosperity of their 
 various possessions. Mr. Hunt, for instance, says, " when the 
 Portuguese first visited Borneo, in 1520, the whole island was 
 
13 
 
 in a most flourishing state. The number of Chinese that had 
 settled on her shores was immense. The products of their in- 
 dustry, and an extensive commerce with China, in junks, gave 
 her land and cities a far different aspect from her dreary ap- 
 pearance at this day ; and their princes and courts exhibited a, 
 splendour and displayed a magnificence which has long since 
 vanished." This is attributed to " the loss of their direct in- 
 tercourse with China." 
 
 Now that the course of events has brought the American 
 people into nearer, easier, cheaper, and more advantageous 
 connection with the Celestial Empire, than England, Holland, 
 Portugal, Spain, or even Kussia, can ever hope to enjoy, shall 
 we despise that for which they have made wars, maintained 
 expensive monopolies, and poured out millions of treasure? 
 
 First, we need hardly say, let us encourage Chinese trade. 
 The possession of the commerce of China and India has en- 
 riched the emporiums of Central Western Asia and Egypt 
 from the days of the Pharaohs. Near a hundred millions of 
 dollars' worth of teas, silks and opium, and other articles of 
 traffic are now annually carried, in European bottoms alone, 
 along the China Sea; and an immense trade is carried on, not 
 only by the enterprising Chinese, but by the people of Tung- 
 king, Annam, Siam, Corea, Loo-choo, Japan, and other nations. 
 By the Parsee, Arab, and Jewish merchants that resort to Can- 
 ton and Shanghai, the cloths and toys of China are carried to 
 the very southern extreme of Africa. We may import their 
 manufactures of silk and cotton, their teas, drugs, sugar, spices 
 and sweetmeats; their porcelain, lacker, and cabinet wares; 
 many curious, ingenious, and beautiful works of art; and arti- 
 cles of food and merchandize, used by the people of that coun- 
 try, among us. They may obtain from us minerals, particu- 
 larly silver, lead, iron, quicksilver and gold; our muslins and 
 other cotton fabrics, broad-cloths, camlets and other woollens, 
 costly furs, and above all, our inventions, some of which they 
 have already introduced and value highly, such as watches, 
 spy-glasses, military weapons, and various kinds of machinery. 
 And the United States is now, it is worth noticing, in a situa- 
 tion more favourable than her European rivals to realize the 
 advantages of the trade with the Chinese, inasmuch as they 
 
14 
 
 themselves are awakened to its importance, and have become 
 the industrious and peaceful agents in its prosecution. The 
 vast results of this commerce, now commencing only, with the 
 east, are utterly beyond all computation or imagination. Mr. 
 Seward, in his recent great speech before the Senate of the 
 United States, inquires — "Who does not see that every year 
 hereafter, European commerce, European politics, European 
 thoughts and European activity, although actually gaining 
 greater force — and European connections, although actually 
 becoming more intimate — will nevertheless ultimately sink in 
 importance; while the Pacific Ocean, its shores, its islands, and 
 the vast regions beyond, will become the chief theatre of events 
 in the world's great hereafter?" 
 
 But the question of main social interest is that of the emi- 
 gration of the people of China to our soil. Shall we welcome 
 the ancient sons of Han ? 
 
 It is to be remembered that the "toiling millions of Europe" 
 that have found their way across the Atlantic to the Eastern 
 States, built our railroads, dug our canals, tunnelled our moun- 
 tains, macadamized our turnpikes, reared our houses, churches 
 and prisons, carried our burdens, and manned our ships, are 
 barred by mountains and seas from those of this remote West. 
 An equivalent provision for the necessities of our vast, rich, 
 important, but wholly unimproved Pacific shore has been made, 
 however, by Providence, if we read it right, in the mission of 
 these Asiatic multitudes. Our own Atlantic States cannot 
 spare a large continued emigration to California. But by the 
 supervision of foreign labour, American knowledge and energy 
 will in time advance California to an equality with the proud- 
 est portions of our land. 
 
 The first necessity of California is for agriculturists. We 
 believe none that are foreigners can be found superior to the 
 Chinese. With cheap and rude implements at home, they ob- 
 tain, by assiduous toil, an incredible return from their garden- 
 like fields. The small annual amount of rain in California will 
 bring into operation their ingenious modes of irrigation. They 
 will enrich any country where they settle, by the introduction 
 of many of their own valuable vegetables and delicious fruits. 
 Perhaps the efforts to make ours a tea and silk producing 
 
15 
 
 country may then be realized. The English are now using 
 Chinese skill and industry with great success in the cultivation 
 of tea in their province of Assam. And the cheapness of Chi- 
 nese labourers is an important consideration. In their own 
 country it is sometimes not above three cents a day ; among 
 the emigrants on farms in Malacca it is $2.75 to $3 a month. 
 The Spanish are importing thousands of coolies from Amoy to 
 Havana at $4 per month, for the cultivation of cotton. An 
 American traveller among the wild Padang mountains of Borneo, 
 writes, " This valley is inhabited by Chinese, who are wholly 
 devoted to agriculture, and seem contented to receive the trea- 
 sures of the soil without tearing up the bowels of the earth in 
 search of golden ore. Their gardens afford a rich supply of 
 vegetables of the most luxurious growth, and their beautifully 
 arranged and well tilled fields of rice, present a pleasing con- 
 trast to the utter wildness of nature all round." 
 
 We need the Chinese as mechanics. Sir James Brooke 
 writes concerning those at his colony of Sarawak, " Wherever 
 the Chinese are, the sound of the axe and the saw is to be 
 heard in the woods as you approach, and all are industriously 
 employed. They have their carpenters, sawyers, blacksmiths, 
 and house builders ; while the mass work the antimony ore, or 
 are busy constructing the trench where they find and wash gold. 
 With such inhabitants a country must get on well if they are 
 alloived fair flay." Why may we not be enriched by the 
 splendid products of Chinese art ? Why may not the costly por- 
 celain of Kiang-si, or Fuh-kien, be manufactured from the Ne- 
 vada quartz ? Or the rich silks of Canton be woven in the fac- 
 tories of Pittsburgh ? Or the beautiful gold and silver plate of 
 the Chinese goldsmith, be wrought by them in our own shops ? 
 There is a boundless field for the employment of their exquisite 
 and patient handiwork, which has been renowned in Europe 
 since the days of Alexander the Great. And, besides, they are 
 quick to learn new arts. Even that of ship-building has not 
 proved beyond their capacity. There is stationed at Canton a 
 fine man-of-war, built for his own government by a native who 
 had been apprenticed to an American mechanic. And ship- 
 building and repairing are largely carried on by Amun, the 
 architect, among foreigners. You may see lying in the Pearl 
 
16 
 
 River, a small steamboat constructed by a native, after the 
 model of those on the Ohio and Mississippi, which he had 
 visited : though, the enterprising builder had not quite enough 
 knowledge of the scientific principles necessary to make the 
 engine go ! 
 
 The important fisheries on our Pacific coast would give em- 
 ployment to a numerous class, whose fleets now sweep the Chi- 
 nese seas, and deposit their spoils for immediate use, or to be 
 salted for the supply of their home market. Salt fish has 
 sometimes afforded a handsome remuneration to American 
 merchantmen ; but cannot be carried to China in large quanti- 
 ties from the Atlantic ports, on account of its rapid deteriora- 
 tion while passing through the tropics by the route of the Cape 
 of Good Hope. Mr. Hunt, speaking of the inhabitants of 
 Borneo, says: "The tillage of the ground and the edible 
 fisheries -are often left to the more indefatigable industry of 
 the Chinese. For the exercise of every other useful occupa- 
 tion, also — the mechanic and scientific arts, and the labour of 
 the mines — these indolent savages are indebted solely to the 
 superior industry and cultivation of the Chinamen." 
 
 We need the Chinese as servants. For patience, docility, 
 readiness to receive instruction, and economy, we are willing 
 to say, emphatically, we have not seen the equals of the Chi- 
 nese. Yet, without Christian principles, they are not reliable 
 for honesty; but they have still a native sense of honour which 
 makes them trusty in many things. We believe the day is 
 coming, when millions of them, as free hired servants, will 
 have superseded, throughout our country, the use of both 
 Europeans and negroes. It is a grand idea to conceive, that 
 Providence may thus christianize them as the negro race has 
 been christianized amongst us, to go back to the families of 
 China triumphing in the freedom of the sons of God, and joy- 
 ful possessors and almoners of the riches of the knowledge of 
 the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 
 
 There are many in the Southern States of this Union now 
 looking to the influx of this remarkable people, with intense 
 interest, as a possible means of relieving themselves from the 
 intolerable burthens of African slavery. We look upon it in 
 its relations to African colonization, as a providential compen- 
 
17 
 
 sation. Prosperous, indeed, would be the day for the South, 
 when the nerveless "sons of Ham" shall be supplanted in the 
 labours of the field, the factory, and the fireside, by the subtile 
 and diligent descendants of the renowned dynasty of the 
 "Han." The South may then expect to cope with the North, 
 in agricultural productiveness, in the manufacture of her cot- 
 ton, and in wealth. 
 
 Finally, we need the Chinese as miners. Their difficulties 
 in California have arisen from their success in accumulating 
 the coveted treasures of precious metal.. We trust, and be- 
 lieve, that they will be settled satisfactorily to all parties. The 
 Chinese miners in the islands of the Indian Archipelago, long 
 continued to work sites abandoned by others. They will find 
 their place as the sub-workers, or the gleaners, of the golden 
 harvest reaped by our own citizens. In the days of Sir Stam- 
 ford Raffles, the average remittance to China amounted to pro- 
 bably scarce more than two hundred dollars a year. Yet they 
 obtained about five millions per annum from Borneo alone; of 
 which one-sixth only reached China in treasure. About one 
 million was returned in merchandize, and the same amount 
 found its way to the European markets in India, Java, and 
 other colonies, for piece goods, coarse cloths, tobacco, salt, 
 and other articles. So these economical workers, and this 
 class of consumers and traders, we need as well as the rest of 
 their countrymen. 
 
 The Chinese are a heathen, and a peculiar people, as yet to 
 us the objects of ignorant wonder and misapprehension. They 
 will soon be better understood and appreciated. Some of their 
 practices have excited great distrust. They are prone to form 
 troublesome guilds, and unite in a species of masonic fraterni- 
 zation. But this is a natural result of their residence under 
 the tyrannical governments, and among the overwhelming 
 masses of population which they have quitted. Governor 
 Bigler's representation of their employment in companies, as 
 coolies, by great capitalists at home, is incorrect, as we have 
 learned from the best authorities in China. But they are wise 
 enough to soon understand their danger and their advantages 
 here; and this very opposition will assist their fusion into the 
 mass of American civilization and progress. We believe they 
 3 
 
18 
 
 will keep the promise made in the remarkable letter they ad- 
 dressed to Governor Bigler. " If the privileges of your laws 
 are open to us, some of us will doubtless acquire your habits, 
 your language, your ideas, your feelings, your morals, your 
 forms, and become citizens of your country. Many have al- 
 ready adopted your religion in their own, and we will be good 
 citizens. There are very good Chinamen now in the country ; 
 and a better class will, if allowed, come hereafter, men of 
 learning and wealth, bringing their families with them." We 
 believe the intellectual countrymen of Ke-ying and Hwang An- 
 tung will, in time, be christianized, and add wisdom and dig- 
 nity even to our halls of legislature. 
 
 Let, then, the United States encourage the influx of this 
 people. The wisest of the European colonists in the East, 
 from the noble Legaspi, who founded a Spanish colony in Min- 
 doro, till now, have warmly invited and favoured a Chinese im- 
 migration. Ever since their subjugation to the Tartar yoke in 
 1650, they have been ready to leave their country in large 
 numbers. Wherever their foot has rested, like the fabulous 
 dragon, painted on their imperial standard, they have been the 
 symbol of prosperity. It were unwise to frown upon them. 
 They are a proud, a timid, a peace-loving race, and we may 
 scare them away. California may learn a lesson from the 
 desolations of once rich and prosperous nations and colonies of 
 the East. " The causes which have eclipsed the prosperity of 
 Borneo, and other former great emporiums of Eastern trade," 
 have been traced justly to "the decay of their commerce," 
 which has chiefly resulted from a barbarous commercial despot- 
 ism, that put a stop to their direct intercourse with China. 
 This, says an intelligent writer, ended in " first the destruction 
 of extensive branches of home industry," and to the fatal effect 
 of preventing the annual immigration of large bodies of Chi- 
 nese, who settled on their shores, and exercised their mechanic 
 arts and productive industry ; thus keeping up the prosperity 
 of the country by the tillage of the ground, as well as in the 
 commerce of their ports." Eor the want of this commerce, 
 many of these lands, once wealthy and prosperous, "have run 
 to jungle," while their cities have sunk down, "like Carthage, 
 to be mere nests of banditti." 
 
19 
 
 But let us rise to higher considerations. Let us look with 
 the eyes of philanthropists, of Christians, to the advent of 
 those dark masses of heathenism to our shores. They dimly 
 hear the rush among the nations and join with the multitudes. 
 But this is all the ordering of Divine mercy. We dwell in a 
 Christian land; and we behold in these the throng that swelled 
 after the footsteps of a Saviour and cried with blind outstretched 
 hands, "Jesus of Nazareth, have mercy upon us." If the Chi- 
 nese have hitherto scorned us, it has not been least of all for 
 our vices ; if they have feared us, it has been because of our 
 unscrupulous and tremendous superiority in the arts of destruc- 
 tion ; if they have hated us, it has been partly because of that 
 terrible and unrepented injury, the opium traffic, and our en- 
 forcement of it in bribery or blood, until this day. How 
 mournfully have we merited the common appellatives which 
 foreigners receive among them, of fanhwei, "foreign devils," 
 hweitsze, "devil's children," pihkwei, "white devils," ohTcwei, 
 "wicked devils;" which torture the ears of the Christian as 
 they ring after him, like screams from the bottomless pit, even 
 when he ventures forth on some work of holy beneficence. 
 Britain and America have drained, from this vast but seve- 
 rally not rich people, the incredible sum probably of five hun- 
 dred million of dollars in specie — last year the traffic pro- 
 duced to us about forty millions — for a consuming poison. 
 Our hearts would break if we should trace its lava track 
 through the glorious provinces it is filling with black and burn- 
 ing desolation, through the myriads of families it is blasting 
 with ruin and death. 
 
 But it is those that love the Lord Jesus Christ, whose affec- 
 tionate sympathies we would earnestly direct to that portion of 
 this great land where Providence is beckoning a Chinese audi- 
 ence to hear the word of life. The poor Chinaman comes to 
 this country, notwithstanding all his native intelligence, a spi- 
 ritually degraded being ; trembling with a thousand horrible or 
 absurd fears and superstitions. As he bends over the toilsome 
 spade, he fancies that demons haunt those hills and watch their 
 treasures, at whose anger, as expressed in the thunder, he is 
 terrified, and would fain appease them with incense and offer- 
 ings of fruits and cakes. Not a whisper of the wind, nor the 
 
20 
 
 gurgle of a rill, nor the bark of a dog, but has some dark sig- 
 nificance to him. As the missionary comes near him to give 
 him the word of life, he will beseech him piteously not to raise 
 up his umbrella, lest the gold shall all be dissolved and washed 
 away in the stream. Let us hasten to set them free from a 
 misery of soul in this life more dreadful than all those tortures 
 of screws, and lamps and cords, with which, in their own coun- 
 try, they sorely wring out a confession from a presumed or 
 pretended culprit ; which is worse than forcing a man to keep 
 upright and without sleep, by stabs, and blows, and pistol shots 
 in his ears, till he dies of fatigue ; for it is the torture of Satan 
 and of fiends, over the souls of those who are not "prisoners of 
 hope," but bound in the chains of hell. 
 
 But what calls for our greatest concern, is their ignorance of 
 God, and judgment, and eternity. They will bring here the 
 gods of their own hills, and rivers, and seas, and sky. Deluded 
 by the enemy of souls, they will bow down and worship their 
 wooden and clay images, instead of Him " who is Cf-od over all 
 blessed for ever." They will, ere long, build heathen temples 
 on American soil, and set up their stocks and stones, and offer 
 heathen sacrifices, and prostrate themselves in degrading 
 heathen worship, in this free Christian land ! All this they will 
 do, unless the gospel is speedily preached to them. 
 
 The field of missionary labour in California is a most hopeful 
 one in many respects, which will be readily suggested to every 
 reflecting mind. The most interesting consideration is, that amid 
 the heat and pressure of our religious and social institutions, 
 the character of these young and enterprising emigrants from 
 China must be moulded anew : and many will go back qualified 
 to be preachers of the gospel, to that land whose untold multi- 
 tudes they left slumbering in darkness and the shadow of death, 
 to pour into its dark caverns and abysses the light of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 In the city of Naples, Matteo Ripa, a returned missionary 
 from China, of the Roman Catholic order called the " Pious 
 Labourers," whose heart was filled with desire for the conversion 
 of the people of that empire, founded a " Chinese College, and 
 congregation," or order of priests. It was opened in 1732; it 
 is said, " with all the solemnities and rejoicings suitable for the 
 
I 
 
 21 
 
 occasion." It stands and prospers there yet, and is described 
 by occasional travellers to that city. Roman Catholic natives 
 of China and India are brought there and educated for the 
 priesthood. Collegians are expected to take five vows : 1, to 
 live in poverty ; 2, to obey their superiors ; 3, to enter holy 
 orders ; 4, to join the missions in the East, according to the 
 disposition of the Propaganda ; 5, to serve for life the Roman 
 Catholic church, without ever entering any other community. 
 
 A mission, far better than that of the mistaken but devo- 
 ted Matteo Ripa, is now undertaken in behalf of our For- 
 eign Board in California, the Italy of this continent, by one 
 whose failure of health, after several years residence in the 
 Chinese province of Canton, compelled his return to this 
 country ; but who now joyfully engages in the interesting work 
 which Providence has opened before him, upon our own soil, 
 among those who have followed hither. In the conclusion of 
 what we have to say, the object of which has been to awaken a 
 general and hearty interest in the Chinese, as a nation that 
 probably assisted to populate this continent thousands of years 
 ago, and that replenished its races and its arts, centuries before 
 its discovery by Europeans, and further as a people, that may, 
 1 if their emigration be encouraged, bestow inestimable benefits 
 on every rood of our Pacific shore, let us solicit the prayers of 
 the friends of the missionary enterprise, that the labours now 
 to be commenced may be blessed of God, and owned, not to the 
 raising up of emissaries of Antichrist, but to the conversion of 
 many of those men to Jesus, who may, in this land and by our 
 means, be fitted to be the instruments of establishing his king- 
 dom in the "land of Sinim." And as so many of the young, 
 intelligent, and energetic sons of the church in this region have 
 gone to that land of gold to obtain wealth, may many remember 
 the words of a Roman Catholic missionary, Francis Xavier, who 
 died in China, "Shall it be said that where others ventured for 
 gold and silver, I was afraid to go for souls?" And may our 
 brethren who have been qualified to preach the gospel, mark 
 the words of the devoted Thomason, when about sailing for 
 India, "I consider that what others expose themselves to, for 
 lucre and worldly honours, ministers ought to endure for 
 nobler ends."