1850.
Men and Things in Shánghái,
229
with naked coffins; very likely it may be so regarded, since the owner has not been able until now to secure tenants, or but very partial occupancy for all these new and well finished apartments.
The asylum was opened on the 5th ult, by direction of the chief ma- gistrate, and at the request of several native gentlemen. As already stated, the complement, 2000, has been made up. This great family consists whol- ly of those who are above the age of three and under that of ten years; and are portioned off twenty in each apartment, and a directress, an aged matron assigned to each company. Most of the apartments, I ought to have remarked before, have a loft, raised some eight or ten feet above the ground; on that the children sleep, while they have their food and their sport on the tiles below.
When an outcast child was found, if able to speak and answer ques- tions, its age, namo and surname, &c., were all noted; those found to be under three years were sent to the Yuhying tàng, or foundling-hospital, and those above the age of ten were rejected. The term outcast is to be un- derstood here in a restricted sense, and not in its common acceptation, as denoting one cast out in order that it shall die, but rather with the expec- tation that it may be befriended and its life prolonged. There are aban- doned persons in all parts of China, equally infamous and cruel, who cast out their offspring to the intent that they may not live; the number of these, it is generally thought, is not great; but in the present instance, and in all similar cases, where want of sustenance is the propelling cause, the little sufferers are sent out to seek a living, and with the most con- fident expectation that they will be fed, and perhaps clothed also, as is done in this asylum.
I will now only add that the entire regulation of the establishment is apparently most admirable, the food, clothing, medicine, etc., are all the best the city affords. Each child is labeled, and a register is kept of the whereabouts it came, so that at the expiration of the three months, the family may be orderly disbanded. About seven hundred of the group are
girls.
Oppression and assault are much more frequent, and much more fatal in their results, among the Chinese, than the barbarians are wont to fancy. The Peking Gazette is often but a poor index of what actually occurs; and popular runior, like the echo among the hills, sometimes marvelously ex- aggerates. Horrible tales are told of what are the results of the last year's famine. In a town, situated somewhere westward from this, it was said the people, oppressed by the magistrate, rose and took his life; then came the mandarins in great force, and leveled to the ground the houses of the malcontents; and so great was the terror that, over a space of three hun- dred miles, not one man, woman or child was to be seen! All had fled in consternation; and the whole town was left one indiscriminate heap of ruins. This case has been reported officially to the Emperor, and published in the Gazette, but as quite a trivial affair, where only two or three persons were slightly wounded, and little or no damage sustained. After the best investi- gation it is in my power to make, through intelligent Chinese, the facts appear to be simply these. In the district under the magistrate of Küyung, not far from Nanking, the famine has been very sore; the rich are few, and the poor many. The landholders were utterly unable to pay their taxes accord- ing to law; the magistrate oppressed and drove them on to desperation. To crown all, he went with the military to pull down one of the ancestral temples, intending by this means to intimidate and compel the gentry to complete, or secure, the payment of taxes. At this the people rose en masse, and the magistrate was pelted, his sedan broken, his cap and button knock- ed off, and he himself compelled to knock head and sue for his life. In this way he was allowed to escape. The leader of the military and