Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 3.djvu/49

of their forces rendered all their plans futile. It was at Chapu, some fifty miles north of Chunhai, that Manchu braves first encountered British soldiers, and there first the latter witnessed the terrible Manchurian custom of immolating all their women and children and subsequently perpetrating self-destruction, at the moment of hopeless defeat. Thereafter Sir Hugh Gough and his small force proceeded to the mouth of the Yangtse, where at Wusung they found a line of stone forts extending for three miles along the western bank of the river and mounting two hundred and four guns, many of them obsolete and worthless. In the defence of this strong position the Chinese sacrificed only thirty lives, and thenceforward they made no attempt to check the advance of a British column, which landed and marched up the Whampoa, a tributary of the Yangtse, to Shanghai, twelve miles distant. There is no evidence that either side attached cardinal importance to the capture of this city. Though included in the five places which the British desired to have opened to trade, no one had then any conception that it would ultimately rise to be the greatest commercial emporium of the Far East. It had been visited just ten years previously by a British merchant and a missionary acting as interpreter,—in those days missionaries did not scruple to lend their aid for the prosecution of illegal attempts to extend the area of trade,—and their report of its commercial po-