COCHINCHINA, 327 
To these people we found less difficulty in making our- 
selves intelligible than we had to encounter in our future inter- 
course with the grave and solemn Chinese, whose dignity 
would be thought to suffer debasement by their condescending 
to employ the pencil in delineating objects, notwithstanding 
its alliance with their mode of writing ; or by attempt- 
ing to indicate, by signs and gestures, such ideas as are 
capable of being interchanged without the aid of language. 
This was by no means the case with the Cochinchinese, who 
always seemed anxious to enter into our views, and to facili- 
tate a mutual understanding. Those Chinese, however, who 
traffic with or engage as servants to Europeans at Canton, 
are as read}'', as ingenious, and as fertile in inventions for 
making themselves intelligible to their emplo)^ers, and in 
meeting the ideas of those whom it is their interest to please, 
as any other people possibly can be. A Captain, for in- 
stance, of one of the East India Company's ships pointing 
one day at table towards a dish, which he supposed to be 
hashed duck, desired his Chinese servant, who had only 
learned a little of the jargon which this description of persons 
are usually taught by their masters, to get him some of the 
quaak-quaak. The servant, having looked at the dish, shook 
his head and, by way of correcting his master s mistake, ob- 
served significantly that it was not quaak-qiiaak, but bow-wow, 
the dish happening to be a preparation of dog instead of 
It is scarcely necessary to observe that the religion of the 
Cochinchinese, like that of almost all the Oriental nations, is 
