Page 63 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

49.

most travelers to China took passage on vessels sailing the

Cape of Good Hope route. Rounding Cape Horn was an experience

.
d
very f ew peop e, even seamen, enJoye . 5
1
Sighting land was the most exciting experience for the

traveler. Unfortunately there were virtually no opportunities

for this until the end of the voyage. Crossing the Atlantic

and the Indian Oceans often meant months of seeing nothing but

water, so that most of the voyagers found the ocean lonely and

depressing. They anxiously awaited the sighting of Java Head

in the Strait of Sunda between Sumatra and Java in the East

.
In d1es. 6 Vessels en route to China often stopped at Anjers
or Batavia (Java) for supplies, letters and perhaps some trade.

The joy of seeing land after so long could scarcely rival the

excitement of arriving at their final destination, the Celestial

Empire. When a vessel reached China, however, it did not

immediately sail up to Canton. Foreign vessels did not reach

the city at all. Canton was located on the Chu Kiang (Chiang)

or Pearl River, known then to foreigners as the Canton River,

seventy miles from its mouth. All foreign vessels anchored

at Whampoa, a harbor in the river roughly ten miles downstream

1
from Canton. Before the 1840 s foreigners believed their

5
china Trade Days in California: Selected Letters
from the Thompson Papers, 1832-1863, ed. by Donald Mackenzie
Brown (Berkeley, 1947), pp. 5-6.
6
Diary of H. Low, Aug. 22, 1829, Low Family MSS.
Journal of Benjamin Hoppin, jr., Jan. 22, 1823, Boston, Museum
of the American China Trade.