24 Kenneth S. Latourctte, 



of course, was prohibited, and to prevent it, vessels were ordered 

 to come immediately to Whampoa and not to linger around the 

 coast.'' *^ 



In addition to the regulations which had to do primarily with 

 shipping, another series concerned the foreign residents of China. 

 Here the Chinese attitude towards the barbarians w^as even more 

 clearly manifested. They were to be held at arms' length, to be 

 segregated and clbsely watched, and to be tolerated only as long 

 as was necessary. Unsupported and unprotected by their home 

 governments or by treaty rights, the foreigners depended for 

 safety and justice entirely on the self-interest of the Chinese. 

 No foreigner was allowed within the city wall of Canton, but 

 was compelled to confine his ramblings to the suburbs, and his 

 residence to the little plot of ground assigned to the foreign 

 factories, or hongs. These buildings were rented from the hong 

 merchants, and were situated on a plot of ground in the suburbs 

 which extended a quarter of a mile along the north bank of 

 the river.''^ Before them was a square, fenced off from the 

 streets until the fire of 1822. The factories were thirteen in 

 number, and were described by Cleveland '° in 1798 as "hand- 

 some houses built in the European style, on the margin of the 

 river. . . . They were generally of two stories, the lower 

 being used as warehouses. They were whitewashed, and with 

 their respective national flags displayed on a high staff above 

 them, made a very pretty appearance." Between the factories 



•^ Hunter, Fan Kwae in Canton, p. 28. 



*® Jacob Abbot, China and the English, New York, 1835, pp. 64-94, gives 

 a vivid, akhough not very accurate, description, claiming to be that of an 

 eye witness. Fitch W. Taylor, Flag Ship, or a Voyage Around the World 

 in the U. S. Frigate Columbia, 2 v.. New York, 1840, 2:170; W. S. W. 

 Ruschenberger, A Voyage Around the World, Philadelphia, 1838, pp. 

 94 £f. ; Richard J. Cleveland, A Narrative of Voyages and Commercial 

 Enterprises, 2 v., Cambridge, Mass., 1842, i : 46, 47 ; J. W. Reynolds, 

 Voyage of the United States Frigate Potomac, during the circumnaviga- 

 tion of the Globe in the years 1831, 1832, 1833, and 1834, New York, 1835, 

 p. 336 et sqq. ; Shaw's Journals, pp. 178-184, 345 ; Hunter, Bits of Old 

 China, pp. 12-15; all contain descriptions of the factories by eye witnesses. 

 Ch. Rep. 14 : 347, has a map, but the best are in Hunter, Fan Kwae in 

 Canton, p. 25, and Morse, Internat. Rel. of Chin. Empire, p. 70. 



'° Cleveland, Voyages, i : 46, 47. 



