almost filled with English, French, and American
ships—one beautiful American vessel, the Sea
Serpent, commanding universal admiration—and
a shoal of tankas and san-pans are covering the
water, plying small floating trades. " San-
pan" means three planks, of which they make
a boat something like a long coffin. One
merchant paddles about in this, and sells soup, or
macaroni, or needles and thread; and
announces his approach by rattling a small drum
filled with peas, as good a thing to frighten a
horse with as can be conceived, but finding no
such use hereabouts. I have a short time to
pay a visit to Captain Heath, who is lying here
in the Assistance screw steam store-ship of
four hundred horse power, and who, with no
chance of being in action up here, and with
nothing particularly amusing in the neighbourhood,
must have felt as dull as the people in
Cheltenham on a wet Good Friday. Then, for
a few minutes, to see Mr. Cooper, who made
the docks at Whampoa, built the Fei-maa in
them, and is Captain Castella's brother-in-law.
He lives in a "chop"—a floating house like a
two-storied City barge, but larger—with his
family. His poor father was murdered by the
Chinese the year before last. They came alongside,
in a many-oared boat, and said they had a
letter for him. He went down the ladder to
receive it, when they pulled him into the boat,
rowed off with him, under the guns of the
English ships, and, it is supposed, beheaded him
up one of the piratical creeks of the river, and
got their blood money from Yeh. Yey, again, the
illustrious exile who is now enjoying his
luxurious opium cum dignitate at Calcutta, and will,
no doubt, be a lion next season in Belgravia, as
other odoriferous Eastern ruffians and
murderers, and swindling scamps generally, have
been before him. Are not these names
chronicled "among the distinguished individuals
present we observed" in the interesting lists of
the fêtes in fashionable papers, from Jumjawbudda
Jaggerbedamjee, whose presence so
enlivened the déjeûner of Mrs. Brown, of Pantile,
down to Sir Underdown Whiffle, Bart., whose
name, as noticed at the Opera last night, must
have so influential an effect upon the future let
for the season?

As we passed Whampoa, the boats on the river
gradually thickened, and there were evidences on
all sides of approaching a great city. The banks
were more carefully cultivated; villages came
closer together; one pagoda appeared after
another in the distance, and the traffic increased.
The river here is about the breadth of the
Thames at Blackwall, with a country as flat as
the Essex marshes on each side, mostly parcelled
out in paddy fields. And now we see the White
Cloud Mountains on our far right, and an amphibious
population begins to inhabit structures
between large birds'-nests and dog-kennels, built on
piles along the mud of the low water. Some of
these are old boats, also raised above high level
upon long bamboo poles, which swing and bend
about in a curiously fragile-looking manner, but
are as trustworthy as iron columns. Next come
entire floating villages of tankas, all moored in
rows, like the ships in the Pool, with their
dirrecting A-tyes, and A-moons, and A-mius, all
looking as if they had moved on from Macao.
Then, larger "chops" of the merchants and
agents, looking like Noah's arks; neglected, but
still gaudy flower-boats—floating improprieties of
unquestionable reputation, which had found the
Canton reach too hot to hold them since our
arrival in its waters; dozens of enormous war-
junks, rotting and water-logged, and in most
instances as complete wrecks as you see at the
ship-breakers' below Vauxhall-bridge. Captain
Castella tells me that the mandarin admirals
receive pay for these old hulks as if they were
all equipped, and stored, and manned, and ready
for action! And now under French men-of-war,
and British gunboats—sanpans, lorchas, dragon-
boats, and mandarin barges, so thickly swarming
that some careful steerage on our part is
required--we are before Canton.

There is not much to see yet, though. The
first impression is that they are going to make
a new street everywhere, for the eye falls on
nothing but mounds of brickbats and solitary
walls of houses, displaying those parti-coloured
boundaries of rooms, closets, and staircases,
which come out so oddly during our own
"metropolitan improvements," when we learn for the
first time that the maids had a blue distempered
bedroom under the roof, and that the first floor
was papered with grapes. Not so high though
—the Canton houses have rarely two stories,
with the exception of the joss-houses and
yamuns, or palaces—so that viewed from the
heights the city looks about as level-topped as a
Swiss village.

We pass the Dutch Folly—a fort on an island
in the middle of the river, about the size of
another fort traditionally devoted to the consumption
of eel pies on our own Thames—now in ruins.
One of the 13-inch mortars, placed here at the
siege of Canton, sent a shell clean over the city
and set fire to Gough Fort, in the country
beyond.

Honan is to Canton what the Borough is to
London, and here the Fei-maa stops—opposite
the site of the old Factories, as they were called.
We have the mails on board, and the tea-tasters
and clerks of the different English and American
houses pull off for letters and news; the Straits
Times being, of course, the great desirable
object. With the sole exception of Galignani's
Messenger, that paper must work cheaper and
pay better than any journal in the world. Most
of our passengers disembarked here, with a row
similar to that at Macao, but less violent.
Captain Castella is going to the Canton Allied
landing-place in his own boat, so he is kind
enough to take me and my interpreter, Mr.
Rozario, with him, and we land in about twenty
minutes down stream.

Can it be Poor Dog Tray that I hear?
Most certainly, and played on a cornet-à-pistons,
merging into the real Robsonian Willikins. And
here am I listening to it, in Canton, with six
Chinese pirates, fresh caught, squatting on the