As a matter of course, we had gales, and squalls,
and the usual vicissitudes of the ocean, to contend with, though our
voyage to Canton might have been called quiet, rather than the
reverse. We were four months under our canvass, and, when we anchored
in the river, the clewing up of our sails, and getting from beneath
their shadows, resembled the rising of a curtain on some novel scenic
representation. John Chinaman, however, has been so often described,
particularly of late, that I shall not dwell on his peculiarities.
Sailors, as a class, are very philosophical, so far as the
peculiarities and habits of strangers are concerned, appearing to
think it beneath the dignity of those who visit all lands, to betray
wonder at the novelties of any. It so happened that no man on board
the John, the officers, steward and cook excepted, had ever doubled
the Cape of Good Hope before this voyage; and yet our crew regarded
the shorn polls, slanting eyes, long queues, clumsy dresses, high
cheek-bones, and lumbering shoes, of the people they now saw for the
first time, with just as much indifference as they would have
encountered a new fashion at home. Most of them, indeed, had seen, or
fancied they had seen, much stranger sights in the different countries
they had visited; it being a standing rule, with Jack to compress
everything that is wonderful into the "last voyage"--that in which he
is engaged for the present time being usually set down as
common-place, and unworthy of particular comment.
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