China and the West

London, Jack. The strength of the strong. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1914).
http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/StrengthStrong/samuel.html
The sea farmer.
Beneath them, on the main deck, two Chinese stokers were carrying breakfast for'ard across the rusty iron plates that told their own grim story of weight and wash of sea…
They were Chinese, with expressionless, Sphinx-like faces, and they walked in peculiar shambling fashion, dragging their feet as if the clumsy brogans were too heavy for their lean shanks…
Coals again to Oregon, seven thousand miles, and nigh as many more with general cargo for Japan and China…
And again he held her away from him, this wife of ten years and of whom he knew so little. She was almost a stranger - more a stranger than his Chinese steward, and certainly far more a stranger than his own officers whom he had seen every day, day and day, for eight hundred and fifty days…
'We regret tull note the loss o' two Chinese members o' yer crew of Newcastle, an' we recommend greater carefulness und the future.' Greater carefulness! And I could no a-been more careful…
Samuel.
In the centre of the mantel was a stuffed bird-of-paradise, while about the room were scattered gorgeous shells from the southern seas, delicate sprays of coral sprouting from barnacled PI-PI shells and cased in glass, assegais from South Africa, stone axes from New Guinea, huge Alaskan tobacco-pouches beaded with heraldic totem designs, a boomerang from Australia, divers ships in glass bottles, a cannibal KAI-KAI bowl from the Marquesas, and fragile cabinets from China and the Indies and inlaid with mother-of-pearl and precious woods…
The rumour died down, and the island fell to discussing in all its ramifications the loss of the Grenoble in the China seas, with all her officers and half her crew born and married on Island McGill…