junks to the barbarians to carry rice out of the country, or cases of piracy committed by foreigners, such things have hitherto been quite unknown. To build a foreign-going junk in China costs from seven to eight thousand taels for a large one, from two to three thousand for a small one. How much could they get for these? A Chinese trader invests his money in a junk as a means of enriching himself; he intends to hand it down to his sons and grandsons. In case he ceases to care about trading abroad himself, he lets his junks out to somebody else and pockets so much per annum. He is not likely to wish to sell it. Besides, the barbarian wood is much stronger than our own; in fact our merchants buy quantities of it, a mast which costs there only one or two hundred taels being here worth as much as a thousand. The barbarians build their vessels much more strongly than we do, putting a whole tree where we should only use a plank, and where we use nails of a few inches they use nails of over a foot in length. Truly I do not think they would be overjoyed to receive our junks as gifts, to say nothing of paying a heavy price for them. Fuhkien and Kuang-tung produce but little rice, least of all Fuhkien. The people look to T‘aiwan for the half of their annual supply, or are partly furnished from Kiang-si and Cheh-kiang. Before the prohibition, a considerable quantity of rice was sent from the Philippines to Amoy. These barbarian countries produce plenty of rice and do not look to China for their supply. The merchants engaged in the foreign trade, being all men of means, would be hardly likely to risk running counter to the law; and under any circumstances, seeing they can get four or five taels per picul for conveying other goods, it is hardly likely they would accept the comparative trifle they would obtain for carrying rice, and offend against the law into the bargain. The biggest fool would scarcely be guilty of this. Hitherto our foreign-going junks have never been plundered on the high seas. Pirates hang about the coast and dodge in and out of islands, seldom going farther from land than two or at most three hundred li, for as but few junks go to a greater distance from the land than that, it would only be waste of time, to say nothing of their having no
