China and the Foreign Devils

Extract

The name “Russell and Company,” heading a package of business papers and correspondence, which lay for years a prey to white ants before they found their way to the Society, recalls perhaps the most romantic and one of the most remunerative of the trades carried on by American sailing vessels. Russell and Company was the best-known American house at Canton in the pre-treaty period, when a few foreign merchants carried on a business there which ran up into the millions, in teas, silks, furs, sandalwood, opium, and western manufactured goods. A consolidation of several of the principal American firms, the company was for years the principal representative of the American business in Canton. The papers were a gift from Mr. Robert Shewan, of Shewan Tomes and Company, of Hong Kong.