Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1880 — The Boatmen of Shanghai. [ARTICLE]

The Boatmen of Shanghai.

The floating population of China ls f immense; ana one is struck With this at| every port. To build and repair their' vessels is a branch of industry I have never seen- described, but it must be enormous. Millious,probably,of families live in them /md never go on shore. There is no craft so small, not even the; sampan” that attends a foreign Bhip.j but has room for its idols or gods, before which the owner burns his “ joss paper.” I will digress here a little to tell of the-boatmen of Shanghai. They' are mostly from the distant seaports ofj Ningpo and Swatow, being of a hardier race and better sailors than the men of! this,province. By some mysterious: telegraphy they know when a ship is' coming, and several lie waiting fora! job at the “ red buoy” outside Woosung. Each one has the name b# the 1 ship he served last painted in a con-; spicuous place aft. The one I engaged had Halloween ” and his name,! “ Sam,” underneath. Sam is a cogno-* men all Chinese boatmen glory in. ; His sampan, which is exactly like all) the rest, is about sixteen feet long* and! about the shape of a half peach stone. A couple of guards run around it. as to: one of onr little stem-wheel steamers,, projecting aft over the stem’and .bending up at the extremities like the bom; of a crescent. What this is for I cannot make out. The forward half is decked over, and under this deck Sam keeps lots of things. The midship section abaft this is not decked, but has a platform, and is roofed over, the roof of bamboo and matting arched from side to side. Under this roof is the seat of honor. On the floor is a rug, and overhead are frescoes taken from Harper's Weekly , the Illustrated London Hews or Illustrated Zeitung, or an illuminated calendar, many of the pictures upside down; all begged from the different ships Sam has attended. Over this roof is its exact counterpart made to slide, and when we are seated Sam will gently slide the whole thing over if it rains, snows or the wind is raw and cold, and give ns a wrap to cover our limbs with! Under this at night Sam arranges himself for sleep somehow or other, and, when religions, worships his *' lares and penates.” Abaft the seat and roof, raised a little, is the standing place for Sam, or poop deck, where he propels the boat. He unships this deck when hungry, and there are, underneath his fire-place, kettle and other domestic utensils, and there he oooks his rice and fish. I must not forget to tell how they propel their boats. It is by sculling. They have a' gigantic oar whkfe they poise on a pin on the stem (nobody but a Chinaman can do it), and by of a cord attached to the oar and the boat, they scull, or “eulo,” as they call it, at a very rapid rate. Vessels of a larger size are scnlled this way, by means of beams projecting from the sides, to the end of which an oar is attached. The tides at Shanghai run very swift, and the winter winds are furious and piercing; but these fellows scull right along against wind and tide. When an moored together at some wharf for the night, they form a large community 4 and discuss the events of the day or gamble half the night. There is nothing done within many miles of Shanghai but they know it before any cue else.— Cor. Boston Journal. In the Cates murder trial at Ridge Spring, S. C., the other day, a' young colored man said: “I jes tell you, white folks got no business gwine to black folks’ parties, case dames is not got much sense no how, and when dey gits a quart of mean whisky dey jes as leave kill dey selves as any other pussoo?’^ During a period of nearly two centuries the first bom of the House of Austria has been a girl—a curious fact.