Book accounts, as has been said, were kept in dollars and cents by foreign houses, at the conventional rate of 717/1000 of a tael per dollar. There was but one exception, that of the English East India Company, which adopted the more rational system of Chinese currency. Payments for raw silk were made at 750/1000, for teas 720/1000, musk 750/1000, as well as for some kinds of opium. As all Chinese produce went by weight, even raw and manufactured silk, and as all computations were in decimals, this system contributed to the ease with which business was carried on.
_Pigeon-English_ is the well-known name given to that unique language through the medium of which business was transacted and all intercourse exclusively carried on between the 'Western Ocean' foreigners and Canton Chinese. For years after my arrival but three foreign residents were Chinese scholars--namely, Doctor Morrison; the present Sir John Francis Davis, the last Chief of the English East India Company's establishment; and one American, myself--while 'Pigeon-English' had grown up with the early days of foreign intercourse with the port of Canton. It is not difficult to arrive at the creation of this particular and strange language. Foreigners came to Canton for a limited period, and would not or could not apply themselves to the study of so difficult a language as the Chinese, of which even a sufficiency for commonplace purposes was not easy to acquire, and if acquired would be useless anywhere else. The local government also placed serious obstacles in the way of learning it, to the length of beheading a Chinese teacher for giving lessons. This is on the authority of Dr. Morrison, who related to me an instance that took place before I arrived, and he further informed me that for years after his own arrival in 1807 he was obliged, as a protection to his own teacher, to study at night in a room with lights carefully screened.
On the other hand, the shrewd Chinaman succeeded in supplying this absence of the knowledge of his own language by cleverly making himself familiar with _sounds_ of foreign words, and conforming them to his own monosyllabic mode of expression, at the same time using simple Chinese words to express their meaning. He thus created a language, as it may be called, deprived of syntax, without the logic of speech, and reduced to its most simple elements. It took firm root, became the conventional medium of intercourse in respect to transactions of enormous value and magnitude, and exists in all its vigour and quaintness to this day.