Page 107 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

93.

were so bold as to be found "eating the labels from the tea

chests, the men's boots and oilskins, nibbling their toenails

as they slept." Also constantly menacing the Factory residents,

especially during the season of the southwest monsoons, were

mosquitos and centipedes with painful bites. Further surprising

the Americans was an assortment of flies, rats, lizards and

venomous snakes. The deadly snakes invaded the Factories

during floods, which apparently were a corrunon occurrence

during the monsoons. The rain caused the river to overflow

into the Square and even into the Factories. One American

resident remarked that the Americans liked the lizards. Living

on the ceilings, they acted "as an auxiliary in catching

mosquitos and flies." The lizards also provided amusement when,

in losing their footing, they dropped onto an unsuspecting
74
person.

Weather and pests were tolerable to a certain degree,

but the restrictions that kept ,Americans virtually confined to

their Factories added to the above discomforts to make their

life tedious and lonely. They had almost nothing to do outside

their business. One young American writing to his family in

1834 surruned up the excitement in his life: II .we almost
every afternoon make up a party for a pull. .upon the river

or a walk of a couple hours in the square which is the sum

total of all the amusement we have in the course of a day

7 4
-
11 t.
p
- Char es . Low, S ome Reco ec ions (Boston, 1905),
1
pp. 28-29; Hunter, Bits of Old China, p. 16.