1850.
Letter from B. J. Bettelheim.
23
continue unmoved in the stern oriental dignity, I soon perceived it was best to assume and keep up, till at least a concession as to residence was made us.
After much talk, and, as I observed, a special conference between the officials, the governor rose, and to my great surprise performed a regular kotau before me, a kind of last effort on their part to shake me in my purpose. After dragging his excellency up from the ground, I appealed to his own sense of honor, whether it was admissable that I should make myself a fool and return, after having come so far, without being able to tell those who sent me anything about a nation in whose welfare they were so much interested. The most prominent aud repeated objection they made was that they would have no more of the papatis (a term which I interpreted to mean papists); I assured them very positively we were no papatis, and ended by producing a bottle of port, that their honors might wash down any further objection that might venture to rise; if I did not wholly succeed, it was probably, as I now know, because the gentle juice of the grape has much less affinity to Lowchewan judicial throats than the triple distillation. We had however so far come to a good understanding, that the talked-of iininediate reëmbarkation was entirely dropped.
But this was not all; for on seeing the tí-fáng kwán making ready to retire, I expressed astonishment at his omitting to order my things to be removed from the beach, intimating at the same time that I held him responsible for any damage happening to them. As I write, I won- der whence, at that critical juncture of circumstances, I had the cou- rage to act and speak as I did. “It shall be given you in that same hour:" with a grain less of boldness and perseverance, I feel persuaded even now, I should have lost my object. A mere hint of this local officer, just while withdrawing from the temple, was the fiat, which at once set every hand at work; and though we had a great number of boxes and packages, in less than a quarter of an hour, all were in the yard, though not all under cover. Might not all these hands, with the same haste have been made to turn against, as they eventually were turned for us? How much reason, therefore, had we for thankfulness and prayer, to praise God and take courage.
Next day I was waited upon by the púching tafú with a long letter, of which, at the time of delivery, I, of course, understood nothing be- yond what my Chinese, with the dozen of broken English words he had caught at Canton, could tell me. But I think this and several other dispatches I have from the government of Lewchew, of import- ance, in order to silence the remarks of some who circulated in China
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