1837.] 



Chinese Feast to Disembodied Spvrits. 



257 



by no means peculiar to the Chinese; the Romans, we are told by 

 Juvenal, offered sacrifices to the manes of their ancestors. It was an 

 ancient custom among them to bury their dead in their dwelling houses* 

 About which their spirits were presumed to hover for the protection of 

 the living. The following notes on the Chinese feast to the spirits of the 

 dead, as celebrated by the colonists at Malacca, were taken on the spot. 

 The ceremonial will probably be found not to differ materially from 

 that observed in the Celestial Empire, as the Chinese settlers, though 

 not at all overburthened by a sense of reverence for their national reli- 

 gion, are remarkably tenacious of the pageants and festivals connected 

 with it, and are moreover excessively superstitious. The number of 

 these settlers in Siam, Cochin China, Tonquin, the Malay Peninsula, 

 and the Islands of the Indian Archipelago is supposed now to 

 amount to upwards of 800,000 individuals, all males. Those in 

 our settlements in the Straits, Penang, Malacca and Singapore, I 

 find, from censuses in my possession, amounted in 1835-6 to 

 not less than 23,854 individuals, who emigrate principally from 

 the provinces of Canton and Fokien. Though contrary, I be- 

 lieve, to the laws of China, emigration is connived at by the govern- 

 ment, as it rids the country of paupers, a few of whom return to spend 

 their hardly earned savings in their native provinces, thus creating a 

 double benefit to the state. The prohibitions touching the emigration of 

 the females are still rigidly observed, and have partly the desired ef- 

 fect of bringing back to their native country many wealthy individuals. 

 If these interdictions were abolished, there is little doubt that our 

 colonies to the eastward would be permanently filled by this active 

 and busy people. The Chinese, in spite of their gambling and dis- 

 sipated habits, are decidedly our most valuable class of subjects in the 

 Straits. I have witnessed their activity in almost every situation, as 

 artizans and mechanics, as navigators, agriculturists, cultivators of 

 spices, miners of gold and tin, as merchants and shopkeepers, and 

 have invariably found them superior, both physically and intellec- 

 tually, to the Malays, Javanese, Siamese, and natives from continen- 

 tal India, among whom they have to struggle for a livelihood. With- 

 out further digression on this interesting subject, I will now return to 

 my notes on the Shaou-e. 



Riding out on the evening of the 1st day of the 7th moon, I observ- 

 ed crowds of Chinese in the streets, busily engaged in burning long 

 strips of yellow and white paper, which formed a series of blazing 

 piles, extending nearly the whole length of the street. They set fire 

 to them with small tapers of red wax. These form the first offerings 



