'We therefore beseech our worthy senior[26] to make known to the other chin-te-le-mun that they would do well to refrain from contesting the speed of their boats on the river, so that after troubles may not accumulate. Then all will be well. Daily may your prosperity increase, without difference.
'(Signed) 'HOUQUA, MOUQUA, PWANKEIQUA' AND OTHERS.
The amount of Houqua's fortune was frequently a subject of debate; but on one occasion, in referring to it in connection with his various investments in rice-fields, dwellings, shops, and the banking establishments known as shroffs, and including his American and English shipments, he estimated it, in 1834, at twenty-six millions of dollars. Assuming the purchasing power of money at that time as being but twice greater than at the present day, it would now represent a sum of $52,000,000. He was a person of remarkably frugal habits (as regards his style of living) from choice and from being of a feeble frame of body. His generosity was boundless, and in accounts he was singularly methodical and precise, never multiplying them beyond what was absolutely necessary. The two or three rooms which he occupied during hours of business in his vast, well-regulated Hong were furnished with simplicity itself.
He withdrew from general business with the foreign community after the Honourable East India Company left Canton, and confined himself exclusively to the house of Messrs. Russell & Co. Through them his foreign business was entirely managed. His yearly shipments to London of those celebrated Chops of Congo, grown on his family estates in the Woo-E country, were well known and appreciated in the English market. His transactions were on a very important scale, and he entrusted them to his Canton agents, through whom they were carried out, with the well-merited confidence which they inspired. They embraced England, the United States, and India. As another illustration of his generous nature, I may refer to an affair that took place nearly fifty years ago, in which his orders were not complied with. We had shipped a cargo, principally of raw silk belonging to himself, which he had ordered from the silk country. It was sold at a large profit. His instructions were that the proceeds should be returned in East India Co. bills on Calcutta. To our surprise and his disappointment, the result of the sale was invested in a cargo of British goods. It was as injudicious an arrangement (free trade then beginning) to ship largely of English manufactures as his own shipment was sagacious, for but little silk was exported immediately after the opening of the trade. The result showed a difference of many thousand dollars to his detriment. On the deviation of orders becoming known Houqua was at once informed that he should not suffer for this breach of instructions, and for the loss we would credit his account.