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great importance, and vastly superior to the old man to whom the boat belonged. He kept himself apart from the rest, maintained perfect silence and gravity, and seemed to find the greatest amusement in examining and re-examining his papers, and combing and plaiting his long black hair, with the assistance of a small fragment of looking-glass.47
The linguists
Each foreign merchant ship arriving at Macau had to engage a linguist before it could proceed up-river to Whampoa.4
A contemporary account states, "The linguists were custom-house interpreters, who procured permits for delivering and taking in cargoes, transacted all the custom-house business, and kept account of the duties.'49
Davis writes tartly that they were characterized 'on account of the absence, rather than the presence, of those accomplishments which are usually implied by the term; for these persons cannot write English at all, and speak it scarcely intelligibly.'50
He adds: 'Like the Hong merchants, the linguists are obliged to pay largely for their licences, and are besides liable to heavy exactions, chiefly from the underlings of office, as the Hong merchants are the prey of the higher officers,' and the merchants had to act as sureties before a licence could be obtained.
The compradors
'At Macau, or later at Whampoa,' Morse explains, 'a ship's comprador must be employed, who has the sole right to purvey provisions and all other articles for the ship or her crew, at prices which were quite impossible to put any check.'51
We have a brief and tantalising pen portrait of one such at the Whampoa anchorage: 'Boston Jack, as he is called, a stout, portly Chinaman, who supplies most of the American ships lying here, with whatever they require.'52
Just how successful and prosperous this person became, is revealed in an American visitor's letter of 1848:
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great importance, and vastly superior to the old man to whom the boat belonged. He kept himself apart from the rest, maintained perfect silence and gravity, and seemed to find the greatest amusement in examining and re-examining his papers, and combing and plaiting his long black hair, with the assistance of a small fragment of looking-glass."47
The linguists
Each foreign merchant ship arriving at Macau had to engage a linguist before it could proceed up-river to Whampoa.4
A contemporary account states, "The linguists were custom-house interpreters, who procured permits for delivering and taking in cargoes, transacted all the custom-bouse business, and kept account of the duties. '49
Davis writes tartly that they were characterized 'on account of the absence, rather than the presence, of those accomplishments which are usually implied by the term; for these persons cannot write English at all, and speak it scarcely intelligibly.'50
He adds: 'Like the Hong merchants, the linguists are obliged to pay largely for their licences, and are besides liable to heavy exactions, chiefly from the underlings of office, as the Hong merchants are the prey of the higher officers,' and the merchants had to act as sureties before a licence could be obtained.
The compradors
'At Macau, or later at Whampoa,' Morse explains, ‘a ship's comprador must be employed, who has the sole right to purvey provisions and all other articles for the ship or her crew, at prices which
was quite impossible to put any check*.51
it
We have a brief and tantalising pen portrait of one such at the Whampoa anchorage: 'Boston Jack, as he is called, a stout, portly China- man, who supplies most of the American ships lying here, with whatever they require.'52
Just how successful and prosperous this person became, is revealed in an American visitor's letter of 1848:
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