Board
of
Trade
But it should never be taken as a criterion, for there coasting junks are known to carry many passengers to & fro, whom it is difficult to distinguish from their crew.
Instead of from 20 to 25 persons jumping overboard, & rowing the boat. Notwithstanding every effort made to prevent them, as he unhesitatingly averred, it would now appear that only two met that fate, & that they were jostled overboard in the confusion & alarm created by the lawless attack on passengers & crew by the schooner's people with swords.
Allowing for some exaggeration in the Chinese statement from the irritated feelings of the injured party, and,
presuming
85
presuming, moreover, that the authorities cannot but feel annoyed at such intermeddling with the pursuits of their seafaring countrymen, entailing misery & ruin upon innocent people, & to little trouble on themselves, I think the letter from Such Taotai may be regarded as exceedingly temperate.
The details of the examinations must be assumed to be correct, for we have no means of questioning them. And besides the concurrence of the Chinese themselves, the Robertson's unprincipled behaviour on leaving this port in beating people who had worked for him on their applying for their wages, & threatening to cut off their tails if they again asked what was due to them, even after...