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Updated: May 18, 2025
He stood at the rail, watching the hazy blue islands, the forests of fishing-boats and high-pooped junks floating lazily at anchor, the indolent figures which he could catch glimpses of on deck, the green waters of the China Sea. He watched them with intent, yet abstracted, eyes. Some echo of the witchery of those Eastern waters at times penetrated his own preoccupied soul.
They were, then, evidently those belonging to the pirate junks which had attacked the Chinese merchantman on the preceding day; and the fort on the hill, yonder, was the pirates' lair which he had been specially dispatched from Tien-tsin to destroy.
In the year 1280 the country was conquered by Jenghis Khan's grandson, Kublai Khan, Marco Polo's friend and patron. He, too, was a great builder. His idea was that the rice harvest of the southern provinces should also benefit the northern parts of the country. Previously the rice had been freighted on junks and carried along the coast, where it was exposed to the attacks of Japanese pirates.
The writer has crossed the Atlantic more than a dozen times on ships with watertight compartments, a so-called modern safety device, but the Chinese had watertight compartments in their junks hundreds of years before modern steamships were ever dreamed about. To the Chinese we must credit the making of asbestos, the manufacture of lacquer, the carving of ivory and many other important industries.
There wuz all sorts of boats, theatre junks and concert junks and plain junks, and Josiah wuz dretful took with this floatin' city, and sez to once that he should build a house boat as soon as he got home he and Ury. He said that he could use the old hay-rack to start it that and the old corn-house would most make it. "Where will you put it?" sez I. "Oh, on the creek or the canal," sez he.
The terms of the Nanking Treaty were not observed by either side; both evaded them. In order to facilitate the smuggling, the British had permitted certain Chinese junks to fly the British flag. This also enabled these vessels to be protected by British ships-of-war from pirates, which at that time were very numerous off the southern coast owing to the economic depression.
Across the other were moored twenty large junks, their guns so placed that they could sweep both channels. In vain the commodore attempted to dash through with his galley. Three boom-boats following took the ground. Grape, canisters, and round shot came tearing among them. Numbers were struck.
Having regained their ships, notwithstanding the polite treatment they had received, under the pretence that they were about to be attacked by some junks, the Spaniards seized several in the harbour, which they knew were richly-laden, and kidnapped a number of wealthy persons on board them. Leaving Borneo, the two ships proceeded to the island of Cimbuhon.
As the stream widened until the farther bank disappeared in the artificial mist of rising smoke and man-stirred dust, the Foreign Devils' fire junks appeared, majestically steaming up and down swift swans that scorned the logy, lumbering native craft, the mat sails and toiling sweeps of which made them appear motionless by comparison.
We estimated our walk in this direction at about two miles, but a good deal of it was along a single street flanked on both sides by ruins. We then embarked in a sanpan and came down the Han, passing through a multitude of junks of great variety in shape and cargo. We landed near its mouth on the Han-yang side, and walked to that town, which is a Foo or prefectoral city, and walled.
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