400 "^ Voyage of the Novara. 



To the English Government is due the credit of having 

 initiated an energetic protest against this trade in human 

 beings, and of having taken such steps as tend to miti- 

 gate the evil consequences which cannot but result from 

 such a system of deportation. Its representative at the 

 Havanna, Mr. Crawford, was the first and indeed only 

 individual who ventured to make representations to the 

 Spanish Government as to the little humanity shown for 

 these poor Chinese emigrants, and to draw public atten- 

 tion to the system.* Under a humane and well-managed 



* The cruelty and injustice with which the poor Chinese emigrants are treated, 

 have repeatedly had the most appalling consequences. The " China Overland Trade 

 i2e/jor(;," published at Hong-kong, under date 2'Sth February, 1861, gives the particu- 

 lars of one such tragedy, which had shortly before occurred on board of one of these 

 emigi'ant ships. On 22nd February, the American ship Leonidas sailed from Canton 

 for the Havanna with a number of coolies on board. Near what is known as the 

 Macao passage, a tremendous noise was suddenly heard in the between-decks. Two of 

 the mates, on descending to inquire into the cause of the disturbance, were attacked 

 with knives and severely wounded. Meanwhile some of the coolies had overpowered 

 the captain and his wife, and had inflicted on them several dangerous wounds. How- 

 ever, the crew ultimately succeeded in driving all the coolies into the hold, though not 

 till after the 29th had been passed in constant fighting. In their desperation they 

 sought to set fire to the ship, by preparing a regular pyre of combustibles, to which 

 they set fire. Ere long, however, the smoke became so intolerable in the hold, that 

 they themselves speedily made every effort to extinguish the fire. The ship returned 

 to Canton. Out of 250 coolies, 94 were dead, of whom some were shot, some were 

 drowned, some suffocated. Singular to say the French man-of-war Durance refused 

 to render any assistance. Other accounts speak in the highest terms of the efforts of a 

 German missionary to put a stop to this practice of kidnapping, dignified by the name 

 of emigration, it having not unfi'equently happened that young Chinese were openly 

 carried off to Macao, and there as openly sold. This is the more readily credible, inas- 

 much as the Chinese are most desperate gamblers, and after they have lost all they 

 possess, think nothing of staking their personal liberty. Thus, a short time since, 

 the son of respectable parents in Sunon was sold by the Emigration Society at Macao 

 fur 40 dols., and it was only by the most unremitting efforts of the German missionary 



