374 Voyage of the Novara. 



The memoir contained the very remarkable statement that 

 the Chinese colony in Calcutta, which in 1858 comited little 

 more than 500 souls, had not alone monopolized several em- 

 ployments, such as shoemakers, tailors, &c., but had, even 

 when thousands of miles distant from home, jealously main- 

 tained several of their customs and rites intact. This Chinese 

 community, so inconsiderable in point of mere numbers, 

 already possesses its own temple, its own priests, and its own 

 teachers, who guard any Chinese immigrants from the perils 

 of proselytism ; it has founded a special association, whose 

 object it is to transmit to their native land the bodies of such 

 as die abroad, while their luxury is beginning to develope itself 

 to the extent of ordering from China at considerable expense 

 troops of actors, so as even at this distance to provide them- 

 selves with the national amusement of a genuine Sing-Song. 

 This peculiarity is of great importance, inasmuch as the 

 emigration from China is ever assuming more extended dimen- 

 sions, and already embraces several portions of the world. 

 We find Chinese scattered throughout Eastern Asia, in Aus- 

 tralia, in California, in Peru, in Brazil, in the West Indies, 

 and, what is very astonishing they thrive and prosper at most 

 places they visit, despite the not very humane treatment they 

 receive, and the wretched, desolate state in which they leave 

 their homes. This enormous emigration of the sons of the 

 Flowery Land seems destined to be of immense importance, 

 and to be fraught with momentous influence upon the future 

 of the other Asiatic populations, whom the Chinese greatly 



