QUEER CARGOES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3398, 30 April 1919, Page 54

QUEER CARGOES.

.THE ROMANCE OF COMMERCE. Quinquireme of Nineveh, from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With, a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine. .... Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smokestack Butting tnrough the Channel in the mad • March days With a cargo of Tyne coal, Road-rails, pig-lead, Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin-traya. Thus Mr John Masefield, in his poem, "Cargoes," seeming to lament the vanished colour and romance from the world ,of commerce. But, as a matter of hard fact, the "dirty British coaster" may very often contain quite as much of the true romance as the "Quinquireme of Nineveh," quite as interesting and delightful things as "sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wines," but for the glamour of the past over the latter articles of commerce. Take, for instance, the following abridged list of the chief articles dealt in by Chinese merchants: —"Silk, tea, sheep, wool . . . deer skins, nut gall, steel . • - quicksilver . . . joss paper . . . melon seeds, paper fans . . . goats, camels . . . eggs, antimony, pigs, bean cake . . . human hair, bamboos, pottery, • jade . . . yaks, fire-crackers . . . ivories, porcelain, cuttlefish, egret feathers, opium, rush mats, oranges, and green tea." Have we not here a list of romantically-named things which can hold its own with anv "ivory, apes, and peacocks"—even though they be stowed away in the capacious holds of one of those most utilitarianlooking of craft, an Alfred Holt or "Blue Funnel" liner? There is always a singular fascination about seeing one of these up-to-date cargocarriers from the East discharging her freight—those interesting-looking bales and boxes inscribed in Chinese characters, their very wrappings, and even the ropes which tie them, seeming to bring with them an atmosphere of "something rich and strange." Not the least interesting part of a Holt liner's freight in Eastern waters is its human cargo, however, and there is something weirdly impressive in the sight of one of these great liners with a crowd of yellow faces looking out from

the lower deck under the glare of elecbrio lamps. The Chinese passenger's luggage, also, does not lack the true Oriental touch, and though one occassionally sees there the orthodox "suit-case" or portmanteau of the West, the usual thing is a queerly-shaped bundle of matting or box of Eastern wood, such as might have travelled with the Chinese caravans in the fourteenth century.

—The Opium Clippers. —

One item in the list of Chinese products cited above has a special interest in view of revelations as to the extent to which the Chinese national vice has been gaining a foothold in this country, and there is, moreover, a very interesting historical side to the question from the maritime point of view. "From the very start (says Mr Basil Lubbock in his history of the clipper ships) the importation of opium into China was entirely against the decrees and wishes of its rulers, who knew only too well the harm done by the drug to all who fall under its influence. And those enterprising British, American, and Pasee firms who engaged in. the opium traffic were nothing more nor less than smugglers—smugglers, indeed, who showed greater daring and finer seamanship and made bigger profits than any the world had previously known." Swift ships were needed for this busi-ness—-ships, moreovex*, which could make the passage from India to China in all weathers, beating up against the : northeasterly monsoon -with, their valuable cargoes, the Patna cakes of opium and the Benares balls of the drug. The ships were small, for their cargoes were not bulky, but many fortunes were made in the trade. Tradition, however, says that misfortune always dogged the footsteps of the owners of such fortunes., —The Trade of the Bald Eagle.— Yet another iniquitous Far Eastern trade into which some fine ships found their way in the "forties" and "fifties" was the coolie trade—carrying Chinese labourers from China to Havana and other f>orts. It was a traffic which was in its owe? forms slave-dealing in all but name, and it was on a voyage of this kind that there occurred the terrible episode of * the burning of the Bald Eagle. _ The Bald Eagle was a fine American "clipper ship in her day, but at the time of her fearful end i she was manned by a Portuguese crew, and carrying one of those miserable cargoes of yellow humanity to the Chincha Islands. When she was well out at sea the coolies attempted to rush the ship, and during the scuffle which ensued a fire broke out in their quarters. Evidently thinking that by firing the ship they would compel the crew to give them their liberty, the maddened Chinese set fire to her in several places, and the efforts of the crew to extinguish the conflagration were of no avail. The Portuguese captain and officers —no doubt hardened by the circumstances of this degrading, traffic in human misery—would not risk opening the hatches, and thus giving, the maddened wretches a chance of life: and at that stage of the proceedings it is doubtful whether any good could have been done by doing so. In the end the whole of the coolie cargo was burned to death below hatches, and the survivors of the cre-w who got clear of the burning vessel in the boats were picked up in Manila Harbour by a British gunboat. Pilgrim Ships.— A curious trade —without, fortunately, any of the tragic associations of that just referred to—is the conveying of pilgrims from the various Mohammedan countries and communities around the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean to the Moslem holy places of Mecca and Medina; a business in which many of the smaller "tramp" ships contrive to pick up quite a useful profit in the intervals of looking out for other cargo. A singularly picturesque human freight are these pilgrims of all ages and sexes, in their flowing robes, generally fairly shabby, for the follower of the Prophet often makes a parade of poverty, partly to ensure himself against risk of robbery, partly to deceive the priests of Mecca, so as not to be expected to disgorge the tribute looked for from a wealthy Moslem. Apes and Peacocks.— The modern counterpart of Solomon's "apes and peacocks' are not seldom met with. Early in the war the German liner Jvronprinzessin Cecilie was taken into Falmouth with a cargo which comprised, among .other things, monkeys and live crocodiles—a consignment intended for the Berlin Zoological Gardens. The animals found their way to the Prize Court in due course, and are now to be seen by British holiday-makers in zoological collections. A certain famous seaport in the North of England earned the proud sobriquet of "Monkey Town" by reason of its extensive imports of these interesting animals, which were brought in large numbers by captains in the West African trade who were allowed to carry such merchandise on deck for their own profit. However, monkeys became so numerous and so cheap as to constitute a positive nuisance, and the trade was consequently Btopped. So, at any rate, the yarn goes, and there is a very similar one about a South Coast port and a glut of parrots. But there is no need to seek far for strange cargoes. The visitor who will go down to the docks to see the ships unloading will wonder at every turn. Strange foreign woods, queer spices, blocks of metal, odd-smelling, odd-shaped, oddcoloured bags, bales, and boxes—bringing to our very doors the romance of slow, palm-fringed, mud-shored tropical rivers, of islands in the far Pacific, of the whale fisheries of the Arctic and the Antarctic, the great timber mills of the North American mainland. Sugar and spice he will see, and all that's nice, as the rhyme puts it; copra, collected by the island traders from hidden lonely beaches amid the blue of the summer seas; hides, tallow, barrels of oil—anything and everything that the mind of man can suggest.— Glasgow Herald.