The "foreigners," by which name, according to a custom which prevails to this day in the East, we shall call persons of British, European or American birth,--called a native mistress a "protected woman," and her "protector" set her up in an establishment by herself, apart from his abode, and here children were born to the foreigner, some to be educated in missionary schools and elsewhere by their illegitimate fathers and afterwards become useful men and women, but probably the majority, more neglected, to become useless and profligate,--if girls, mistresses to foreigners, or, as the large number of half-castes in the immoral houses at Hong Kong at the present time demonstrates, to fall to the lowest depths of degradation. These "protected women," enriched beyond anything they had even known before the foreigner came to that part of the world, with the usual thrift of the Chinese temperament, sought for a way to invest their earnings, and quite naturally, could think of nothing so profitable as securing women and girls to meet the demands of the foreigners. Marriage having always been, to the Oriental mind, scarcely anything beyond the mere trade in the persons of women, it was but a step from that attitude of mind to the selling of girls to the foreigner, and the rearing of them for that object. The "protected women," being of the Tanka tribe, were well situated for this purpose, for they had many relations of kindred and friendship all up and down the Canton river, and the business of the preparation of slave girls for the foreigners and for foreign markets (as the trade expanded) gradually extended backwards up the Canton river, until many of its boats were almost given over to it. "Flower-boats" were probably never unknown to this river, but, besides their use as brothels, they became stocked with little girls under training for vice, under the incitement of an ever-growing slave trade. These little girls were bought, stolen or enticed from the mainland by these river people, to swell the number of their own children destined to the infamous slave trade. Chinese law forbids this kind of slavery, but, as we have seen, the Tanka people were sort of outlaws, the river life facilitated such a business, and Hong Kong was near at hand. In later years Dr. Eitel, Chinese interpreter to the Governor, stated: