422 
& each bow of their junks there is al- 
s painted a large eye, and they are 
ha Tete (or at least pretend to be so) 
that our vessels can find their ws a 
through immense oceans without eyes! 
Those who are brought up to boats _ 
are in general prohibited from residing 
on shore till after acertain term of years, 
anless they have accumulated a sufiicient 
sum to purchase a littie house and a piece 
of land. 
Their fishing fleets are extremely well 
regulated, acting in perfect concert ; and 
no > boat presuming to anchor or weigh 
until the commodore has made the signal 
by Gong, or beat of Tom Tom. 
The mouth of the Tigris, nay, the whole 
coait from thence to the island of Hain- 
an,is very much infested with pirates, 
called Ladrones. These are outlawed 
Tartars and Chinese, who as soon as they 
jay hold of any boat or vessel, not only 
plunder it, but condemn the crew to per- 
petual slav ery in the Ladrone fleet. They 
sometimes, however, relax so far in this 
respect, as to let old men go ashore on 
promising to send them a certain ransom, 
which the liberated persous seldom fail 
to perform with the most religious ex- 
actness: fearing, it is presumed, that if 
they did not, ae were altersvards cap- 
tured, they might staad a fair chance 
of losing their heads; the Ladrones not 
being very ceremonious.in this respect. 
The small craft on the river, therefore, 
are so terniied at the idea of falling into 
the hands of the Ladrones, that when 
any of our boats were proceeding to, or 
returning from ii aie a whole convoy of 
Chinese vessels of various descriptions 
were seen attending them, and taking ad- 
vantage of the protection they afforded : 
such is the confideace placed in British 
tars, even in this remote part of the 
world ! 
To this I was once an eye-witness; 
the Ladrones having become so bold, 
that they actually landed at. Lintin shortly 
after we lett it, and plundered some of the 
villages. The men.of-war junks even, 
and mandarins’ boats, at this time were 
so frightened, that when a picasure party 
of us went in the Caroline’s launch, trom 
Asison’s bay to Macao, we bad a conv oy 
of some hundreds of vessels, that came 
to au anchor when we did, and got-un- 
der w eigh whenever they saw us do so. 
The Chinese maritime fights are ra- 
ther curious, being somewhat. different 
from those of Europeans; tor their men 
ef war have no guns, or at Jeast. very 
few. Instead of these they have leug 
Journal of a Voyage in the Indian Seas. 
[June 1, 
slender bamboos, armed at one end with 
pieces of iron hike our boarding-pikes, 
and some lke battle-axes; their other 
weapons, offensive and defensive, consist 
in general of baskets of stones, of diffe- 
rent sizes, adapted to the distances at 
which the engagements happen to com- 
mence ! 
lL had an opportunity of seeing one of 
those battles once between two fishing 
boats, and I must confess they made use 
of those missile weapons with uncommon 
dexterity: very seldom missing their ad- 
versary’s vessel at least,. and not unfre- 
quenily @ eivingand reeeiving most woeful 
knocks themselves. W e were told that 
the men-of-war-junks sometimes carried 
macclilocks, but we could never see _— 
of them. 
On the twenty-eighth of Rides I 
embarked in company w ith several other 
officers on_an excursion to Canton. The 
weather was now so cine that we were 
obliged to mutile ourselves up in all the 
European clothes we could possibly mus- 
ter; and here many of us became~sensi- 
ble of our improvidence in neglecting to 
preserve, while in India, those articles of 
dress which we had brought from a nor- 
thern climate, but which, while frying 
under the Line, we thought we should 
never need again. As the distance 
was nearly fifty miles, we did not neg 
lect to lay in a sufhicient quantity of - 
grub (as it is termed); in order that the in= 
terior might be as well fortitied against 
the severity of the season, as the exte- 
rior: and this we found a very’ wise pre=- 
caution, 
After passing through the Bure Ti- 
ger island (so called from some fait re- 
semblance which it is supposed to bear 
to a couched tiger,) presents itself on the 
left hand. It was abreast of this place 
that commodore Anson first came to an 
anchor after entering the Tigris, to the 
“no small surprize of the Chinese at An= 
nanhoy fort, . where they mustered a 
motiey band in. hones of intnnidating him 
from passing the Bocca, Vieris. On the 
right hand the land is flat and swainpy,: 
cousisting cniefly of paddy fields, inters 
sected by innumerable branches ‘of the 
river. We here saw amazing flocks of wild — 
duck, teal, and paddy birds, flying often 
ns) lake tin, us that we might ‘alana have 
knocked them down with our: sticks, and 
so as to induce one to suppose they were 
never molested by the fatal tube or insi- 
dious snare. , 
By the former, indeed, they are never 
annoyed, unless when Europeans. are 
passing 5 
