Collection: Books and Periodicals > Hutchings' Illustrated California Magazine

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Title: Volume 4 (1859-1860) Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Collection Name: Hutchings' Illustrated California Magazine Published: 1859-1860 # of Pages: 600 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2024-08-29 22:24:08 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 03:21:09 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 03:21:09

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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CHINADOM IN CALIFORNIA. iT The principal production is rice, but wheat and other grains are grown, as well as yams, potatoes, &c. Even the steepest hills are brought into cultivation, and artificially watered. The manner in which the dwellings of the peasantry are situated, not being collected into villages, but scattered through the country, contributes greatly to the flourishing state of agriculture. There are no fences, nor gates, nor any sort of preventives against wild beasts or thieves. The women raise silk worms, and spin cotton, and manufacture woolen stuffs, being the only weavers. The Chinese have all the domestic animals of Europe and America. The camel is the beast of burden, Poultry abounds. The revenue is $150,000,000, and the army consists of 900,000 men, The Chinese, as we have already said, pay a kind of religious homage to their ancestors, and perform ceremonies around their tombs. “Ancestral worship,” says Prof. Whitney, ‘has nowhere attained to such prominence as a part of the national religion, as in China; it even constituted, and still constitutes, almost the only religious observance of the common people, and which nothing has been able to displace. Every family has its ancestral altar; with the rich, thig has a separate building allotted to it; with the’ poorer, it occupies a room, a closet, a corner, a shelf. There the commemora~ tive tablets are set up, and there, at appointed times, are presented offerings of meats, fruits, flowers, apparel, money. Distinguished philosophers and statesmen, patriots, who have given their lives for their country, are in a manner canonized, by having their memorial tablets removed from the privity of the family mansion, set up in public temples, and honored with official worship.” Of this character is the homage paid to the great man whose image graces the Chinese temple in this city. Infanticide has been charged upon the Chinese, as a national and authorized practice, but without foundation. A correspondent of the N. Y. Observer, writing from Pekin, says: “The ‘dead wagon’ still continues to frequent the streets of Pekin, and I have seen them every morning proceeding at a slow pace through the two principal streets of the capital, and back again. Every one may throw his dead child into the wagon, without mentioning from whence it comes, or whose it is; he only ays a small copper coin to the driver. The corpse must, however, be either wrapped in a mat, or laid in a coffin, else itis not received. These wagons were, whenever I met them on their way back, filled up to the brim with small bundles and coffins, out of which often peeped the little hands or feet of the departed children, This is the garb in which Chinese charity appears. The cart with corpses thus collected, passed through the southwest suburbs of Pekin, where a place with a temple is fixed for their reception, and where they are deposited, until there is a sufficient number for interring them. When this is the case, they open a large hole, into which the coffins and other combustibles, together with the corpses, are thrown, burnt, and then covered over, whilst a Buddhist priest reads the customary prayers for the dead. This practice of collecting the dead children is said to have commenced on the occasion of a small pox epidemic, during the reign of Kienlung, when so many children died, that the parents threw them into the streets, so that the police were obliged to collect and bury them. According to our religious notions, this may ea cruel on the part of the parents. The Chinese, however, have a different opinion of it; the human soul, is, according to their notions, not yet perfect before the eighth year,—therefore, children under that age are never buried in family cemeteries. “Roman Catholic missionaries have concluded from this, and circulated in Europe, that infanticide was permitted in China. Infanticide is prohibited by law, and is punished like any other murder; even intentional abortions are visited with corporal punishment. If, therefore, among the children thus collected, there are some who died a violent death, this would only prove that those who