yet attained. Canton lying within the tropic,
we shall change our climate on the journey
northward. An empire that engrosses nearly
a tenth part of the globe, and includes the
largest population gathered under any single
government, will have many climates in its
eighteen provinces. Now we are sailing
swiftly northward by a barren rocky coast,
with sometimes hills of sand, and sometimes
cultivated patches, and, except for the pagodas
on the highest elevations, we might fancy we
were off the coast of Scotland.

Five ports are open to our trade upon the
coast of China; one of these, Canton, we have
merely looked at, and the next, Amoy, we pass
unvisited in sailing up between the mainland
and Formosa. Amoy produces the best
Chinese sailors, and it is in this port that the
native junks have most experience of foreign
trade; it is a dirty, densely-peopled town, too
distant from the tea and silk regions to be of
prominent importance to the Europeans. As
soon as we have passed through the Formosa
channel, we direct our course towards the
river Min, and steering safely among rocks
and sand-banks, among which is a rock cleft
into five pyramids, regarded with a sort of
worship by the sailors, we float up the river
to the third of the five cities, Foo-chow-foo.
The river varies in its width, sometimes a
mile across, where it is flowing between plains,
sometimes confined between the hills ; a hilly
country is about us, with some mountains
nearly twice as high as those up which we
clambered at Hong Kong. We pass, after a
few miles' sail, the little town and fort of
Mingan; we sail among pagodas and temples,
near which the priests plant dark spreading
fig-trees, terraced hills, yielding earth-nuts
and sweet potatoes; we see cultivation carried
up some mountain sides beyond two thousand
feet, and barren mountains, granite rocks,
islands, and villages; here and there more
wooded tracts than usually belong to a Chinese
landscape, rills of water and cascades that
tumble down into the Min. We have sailed
up the river twenty miles, and here is
Foo-chow-foo. We have met on our way a good
many junks, having wood lashed to their
sides; and here we see acres of wood (chiefly
pine) afloat before the suburbs, for here wood
is a main article of trade. We pass under the
bridge Wanshow ("myriads of ages "), which
connects the suburbs on each bank; it is a
bridge of granite slabs, supported upon fifty
pillars of strong masonry, the whole about
two thousand feet in length. The suburbs
happen just now to be flooded, and the large
Tartar population here delights in mobbing a
barbarian. This inhospitable character repels
men, while the floods and rapids of the river
and its tributaries, causing an uncertainty of
transit, tend also to keep European traders
out of Foo-chow-foo. True, the bohea tea
hills are in the vicinity, but their bohea tea
has not a first-rate character, and the great
seat of the tea trade is yet farther north.
The city walls are eight or nine miles in
circumference; but we will not enter their gates,
for all Chinese cities have a close resemblance
to each other; it is enough to visit one, and
we can do better than visit this. We sail
back to the sea again, and there resume our
northward voyage. We have seen part of the
mountainous or hilly half of China; farther
north, between the two great rivers, and
beyond them to the famous Wall, is a great
plain, studded in parts with lakes or swamps,
and very fertile.

Far westward, we might journey to the
high central table-land of Asia, where there
are extensive levels ; but the seaward
provinces are the most fertile ; and as for the
Chinese themselves, they are in all places very
much alike—in body as in character. But
sailing in our ship, and talking of those plains,
we may naturally recal to our minds those
ancient days when the Chinese, civilised then
as now, guided their chariots across a pathless
level on the land by the same instrument that
guides our ship across a pathless level on the
water.

The coast by which we sail is studded with
islands, and to reach Ningpo, the fourth of
the five ports, we pass between the mainland
and the Island of Chusan. The water here is
quite hemmed in with islands forming the
Chusan Archipelago. Chusan is like a piece
of the Scotch Highlands, twenty miles long,
and ten or twelve broad, with rich vegetation
added. Forty miles' sail from Chusan brings
us to Ningpo. Amongst the numerous islands
past which we have floated, we should have
found, on many, characters not quite Chinese.
One island, visited for water by one of our
ships, was said to be an Eden for its innocence.
Crime was unknown among the
islanders; and at a grave look or a slight tap
with a fan, the wrong-doer invariably desisted
from his evil course. The simplicity of
the natives here consisted in the fact, that
they expected credit for the character they
gave themselves. On another island, the
natives entertained snug notions of a warm
bed in the winter. Their bed was a stone
trough; in winter they spread at the bottom
of this trough hot embers, and over these a
large stone, over that their bedding, and then
tucked themselves comfortably in.

Ningpo, with its bridge of boats and Chinese
shipping and pagodas, has a picturesque
appearance from the river. It is large, populous,
and wealthy; a place to which the
merchant may retire to spend his gains, more
than a port for active and hard-working
commerce. That is the reason why we will not
land at Ningpo. Where, then, shall we land?
If you have no objection, at Shangae, the fifth
and most important, although not the largest,
of these ports. But sea life is monotonous,
and therefore we will take five minutes'
diversion ashore, after we have sailed some
twenty miles up this canal. Here we will
land under an avenue of pines, and walk up