[
    {
        "id": 206243,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1971",
        "page_number": 60,
        "title": "RAS-1971",
        "content_text": "HON EDITOR \n\nof the period in later life in two well-known books entitled The 'Fan Kwae' at Canton before Treaty Days 1825-1844 (Kelly & Walsh, 1882 and 2nd edition 1911) and Bits of Old China, also published by Messrs. Kelly & Walsh at the same dates. C. Toogood Downing's The Fan-Qui in China (three volumes, London, Henry Colburn, 1838) is another well-known contemporary account.\n\nExtracts from the Letters * \n\nTO HIS SISTER, DATED CANTON, 12TH DECEMBER, 1835 \n\nMy time here is fully occupied, I am glad to say. If sometimes rather too much so there's no great harm done; I assure you I have supped too full of the horrors of idleness in time gone by, to fret at hard work now. There are several circumstances in Canton life which agree with me very well—and these are just enhanced by contrast with its disadvantages. There is some interest too in the strange faces, browned and weather-beaten, of the ship-captains from Liverpool and London etc. who are lodged and boarded of necessity in our Hong here all the time their Ships are in the Port, so that Covers are laid every day for an indefinite number, and the whole Domestic Establishment in short is a Boarding-House with a Table d'hôte at 7 p.m. The comfort of this evil, is the sanctity with which folks' private-rooms are regarded—seeing that there is no privacy whatever elsewhere; and in my bedroom accordingly, I enjoy greater security and deeper seclusion than if I were a stranger in an Inn with boots and chambermaids and postboys to interrupt me whether I have business with them or no. Sundry persons who dislike the strict imprisonment of a Canton-life, venture out, of evenings, on the river, in wherries. As there is a barrier, a break-water, of some thousands of boats and river-crafts of the most unutterable forms and still more unmentionable characters, to break, bruise and burst through, before ten square feet of dirty water can be won free, this is not an amusement I have taken to; and fond as I used to be of it, I think I shall become more and more averse to experiments on the Canton River the longer I remain in China. Three Europeans have been drowned by accident since my arrival here, which is just an \n\n* \n\n* The text has been left in the writer's style. Additions and queries in square brackets are the Editor's.\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216064,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 363,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "297\n\nbandits to seek their fortune. Mesny explained that the opportunity occurred for 'the four bold adventurers' to leave the city together with the bandits together with several old Taiping chiefs, amongst whom was a brother of the Shou Wang, the Taiping leader who formerly had held Ningbo. The four, Jerome, a cripple having had one of his legs damaged during the [Opium] war; Captain O.P. Damström, a Swede; Anthony Fiamin, an Austrian from Fiume; and Beeman, a Britisher from London. Mesny believed that they were the only foreigners who actually served with the Nian rebels. Mesny went to see them off and Jerome embraced him very affectionately after the manner of his country. They had not been gone very long when Mesny received a letter from Damström saying that he had been wounded in a cavalry charge against some 'trainbands' who had attempted to cut them off from the main body. The Four Bold Adventurers had then accompanied the Nianzi in their revolving rambles all over the country lying between the Yangzi and the Yellow River from Hankou to Zhifu and back again until the whole body of the bandits had been beaten and dispersed. At the dispersion Damström had been taken prisoner by the Imperial forces and as such had been brought down to Zhenjiang in a cage, or so Mesny understood, and had it not been for Captains Welsh and Macdonald who had been in charge of the artillery and rocket batteries in one of the Imperial camps Damström would very likely have been done to death like his three companions none of whom, though they had surrendered to the Imperial forces, ever returned to the [treaty] ports. Beeman was said to have been buried alive in Shandong, Jerome and Anthony appeared to have been murdered by their captors in northern Jiangsu [province], having become separated during the last few days march.\n\nWe know remarkably little about Mesny's life during the 1880s. A very serious famine ravaged Anhui province during 1888/9, and Mesny, then aged 46, made two long journeys through Anhui and northern Jiangsu provinces to judge and report on the extent of suffering. During his journeys, Mesny later wrote, he discovered that Earl Zeng [Guochuan], the Viceroy of Nanjing, needed the funds raised earlier by a Shanghai charity, the Renjishan Tang, to appease and pay off the Cantonese bandits, the Shap-ng Tsoi,33 who were very active in the Yangzi valley at the time. Mesny added that he, Mesny, in 1889, had assisted in the pacification of the excited populace at Zhenjiang where he had arrived a few hours after the British Consulate and other buildings",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]