United States or Albania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The custom of this port is to disarm every ship that enters it, sending two frigates or armed vessels, called chan-pans, full of men, to ride close by the vessel, to ensure the execution of all orders from the hoppo and chief mandarin. Besides the enormous imposition under the name of port charges, already mentioned, they have other strange methods of getting money.
How very different was the idea formed of this functionary by the Chinese and English may be gathered from their official views of his work. What the Chinese thought has been told in the words of the Hoppo. Lord Palmerston was more precise from his point of view. His instruction to Lord Napier read, "Your lordship will announce your arrival at Canton by letter to the viceroy.
He proceeded up the river to Canton, but, although he succeeded in making his way to the English factory, it was only to find himself isolated, and that, in accordance with the viceroy's order, the Hoppo had interdicted all intercourse with the English.
But the Hoppo and his associates were the real friends of the foreigner, and opened the back door to foreign commerce at the very moment that they were signing edicts denouncing it as a national evil and misfortune.
At Amoy, as in most other ports in China, the customs are under the direction of a single mandarin, called the Hoppo, or Hoppou. The Chinese are justly reputed the craftiest people in the world; and it is their invariable maxim to appoint the cunningest man they can find to the office of hoppo.
But in this message the Hoppo seems to have expressed his own view rather than that of the Pekin government or the Canton viceroy; and certainly none of the Chinese were prepared to find substituted for "a chief of commercial dealings" an important commissioner clothed with all the authority of the British ruler.
There was now an end of all regularity on board, the authority of the captain being completely overthrown. The country people supplied the ship with abundance of rice, with some cattle and fowls, together with wood and water, for which they were paid. On the 12th the officers went ashore to wait upon the hoppo, who had a fine palace.
The two points of radical disagreement between these views were that the Chinese wished to deal with an official who thought exclusively of trade, whereas Lord Napier's task was not less diplomatic than commercial; and, secondly, that they expected him to carry on his business with the Hoppo, as the Company's agents had done, while Lord Napier was specially instructed to communicate with the viceroy, whom those agents had never dared to approach.
Less than a dozen feet away a Moro sentry, rifle on shoulder, halted, regarding them keenly. "Manu batto dobi kem," murmured Hal to his chum, in a low voice. Noll answered in the same low tone. Both were shaking with more than the chill of the rain, but Hal turned to the sentry, inquiring mildly: "Hoppo tuti sen antrim mak?" The Moro sentry shook his head. He did not understand that dialect.
The wizards owned that they could raise tempests whenever they pleased, and named several persons who possessed similar powers. They were hanged, and then burned in the market-place, and seven of the persons they had mentioned shared the same fate. Hoppo and Stadlin, two noted wizards of Germany, were executed in 1599.
Word Of The Day