About nine o’clock of the night of the 10th of March, the lookout in the top sang out, “Light, ho!” which we knew must be on the island of Ceylon. The entrance to the harbor of Point de Galle, being quite narrow, we endeavored to get such soundings as would enable us to come to anchor until daybreak, but not succeeding in this, the ship’s head was put off shore, and we lay-to for the night.

That most ancient and quasi-veracious traveller, Sir John Mandeville, who had great injustice wrought him by the wits of his day, I think it was, who, in speaking of the approach to Ceylon said, that the spicy odor therefrom could be smelt long before “the land thereof might be discerned from the tallest masthead of a ship.” If this be true, Sir John, great changes have taken place in these latter days. We did not detect anything unusually odoriferous in the atmosphere; and I subsequently found that one might walk through a cinnamon grove without being attracted by the scent, as the cinnamon proper is hermetically sealed by a kind of epidermis bark, which has to be removed before it is gotten at. The nutmeg, with the mace around it, at first of a deep-red color, is enveloped in a covering as thick as the enclosure of the stone of the apricot, and on the tree resembles this fruit before ripening. The “spicy breezes” blow very “softly o’er Ceylon’s isle.”

The next morning, having gotten a pilot, we ran into the harbor of Point de Galle, which is a very contracted one, though quite secure, surrounded by groves of the tall cocoa-tree, which nearly conceal the town. The town, built by the Portuguese, is entirely walled in and fortified; and since its capture by the English its defences have been increased. It occupies a space equal in extent to Fortress Monroe, and was garrisoned by a native rifle regiment, with English officers, and a small number of royal artillery. These Ceylonese troops are said to show a ferocity of courage when in battle, and the arms of their light-complexioned commanders frequently have to be resorted to, to make them cease firing when the order is given. Point de Galle is now one of the stopping-places for the peninsula and oriental mail steamers en route to China, and the isthmus of Suez. There are two other ports on the island: that of Colombo, celebrated for its pearl-fisheries and white elephants, and that of Trincomalee, from which a great quantity of the teak-wood is brought.

We had scarcely anchored when the ship was surrounded by native canoes, called d’honies, which, at a little distance, resemble planks edgewise upon the water, fifteen or twenty feet in length. They are hollowed out of logs so narrow, that the paddling occupant usually keeps one leg dangling over the side. To prevent their capsizing, a solid log, much less in size and length, pointed at both ends, is placed about ten feet off and parallel with the boat. This is connected with the boat by arched bamboo poles, and forms an out-rigger. A paddle propels them very easily, and they sail quite fast.

These boats were filled with Indiamen and Ceylonese, who would have been dressed if they had only had some garment from the slice of cotton about the loin, up to their neck or down to the heel. In a short time our decks were filled with them; also Mussulmen and Arabs, with their small oval caps and vests, exposing breast and arms, and others wearing kerchiefs of all manner of gaudy colors wrapped about them and hanging to the knees like a skirt. But the thing that strikes you with the most singularity is, that the men whose heads are not shaved, wear their hair in a knot like women, secured to the back of the head with a large tortoise-shell comb. These fellows “salam” you, and their salutation is extremely servile. Some of them come for your clothes—they are washermen, and return your garments with remarkable quickness for the East. Others pull out of their kummerbunds at the waist a lot of what they call precious stones, and say, “Wantshee, me have got good mooney stones—star stones, ruby, cat’s-eye stone, sapphire,” &c.

The “prospect” of being cheated is not a pleasant one at any time; and these men are very “vile.” The fellow will hold the precious jewel to the light, and in the dark, vary its position, rub it, and praise it with great earnestness and sincerity, but should you be verdant enough to purchase the gem, even at half the estimate set upon it by him of the land of Golconda, an ordinary rat-tail file will very soon assure you that you have got a fine specimen of cut-glass. The genuine, or precious stones, are bought up by agents and sent to London. Should their sales grow very slack they are most desirous of trading for any old clothes you may have—oriental and old clothes!

I landed as soon as I could, after our salute, on the jutty, from which Mr. Barnum’s elephants had been shipped, and passing through a walled gate, entered the town, the sun shining down fiercely. The houses were of a yellow stucco, very low, without glass in the windows, generally, and their doors concealed behind mat screens. In my stroll in the direction of a fine new lighthouse, terminating a picturesque point where the sea continually breaks sullenly, my attention was attracted by a very long, notched white flag, with a number of smaller ones on the sides, hanging from a tall mast. On going toward it, I found it was placed at the entrance of a walled enclosure, which contained a mosque and Mussulman school. Fronting the door of the mosque was a pool of not the clearest water, enclosed in handsome masonry. While I stood there, many of the devout, among whom I saw a blind man, came in and washed their hands and face, to say nothing of abluting their dentals, previous to proceeding to their devotions inside the building; while in the interior were a number kneeling on mats, then sitting back on their bare feet, the palms of the hands meanwhile resting on the knees, occasionally striking their forehead against the tesselated floor, facing in the direction of Mecca. Their pointed, clog-like sandals they had left outside. I was told I could enter if I would remove my pedal covering, but I declined. Removing one’s boots after a long walk, in a temperature of ninety odd, is not exactly the thing. I asked, quizzically, a long-bearded old Mussulman standing by, who understood English, whether he had any idols in his temple. He replied quickly: “No; there is but one God: we worshipped your Savior and turned our faces to Jerusalem, until Mahomet our Savior came—now we turn our faces to Mecca.” Pointing to a Hindoo temple, he remarked: “They have idols over there, but we are not allowed even to eat or drink anything when we are near these buildings.”

In a low stone edifice adjacent to this mosque I glanced in at a school, where fifteen or twenty infantile scholars of both sexes whose wardrobe complete consisted of ankle, waist, and wrist rings, and pendent little silver ornaments, squatted on mats. In their midst, a la Turk, sat a shaven-headed, long-bearded Mussulman, chewing the betel-leaf and areca-nut, and uplifting at intervals the rod of correction, which was more effective than the ferula of the Christian, owing to the scanty costume of the juvenile recipients of Mohammedan morality. The scholars were engaged in writing with bamboo pens, on boards covered with a clay preparation, passages from the Koran, which was lying open upon a little stand in front of the red-saliva pedagogue. When he turned a leaf of his sacred book, he did it with a portion of his white garment, never touching the page with the naked hand. It appeared to be a free jabber on the part of the tender nudes, in Arabic, but if a sentence was missed by one, down came the Damocletian ratan, and the humanity of breeches rushed with full force on the mind. The kind heart of Dame Partington would have been greatly grieved, and she would have philanthropically exclaimed, “Bless the inventor of clothing.” And “bless the inventor of clothing;” the vitiated taste that can find nothing repulsive in an exact marble nudity, which, in the flesh of the original would be thought with Dogberry, “most tolerable and not to be endured,” would be most fully satiated—gorged—after continually looking upon the half-clad and garmentless people of the East, no matter how fine their figures. He will certainly become of the opinion that dress is a part and parcel of a woman, and that she is never so engaging in appearance as when clad in Christian garments. “Greek slaves” in bronze don’t answer.

One is struck with the fullness, beauty, and glossiness of the hair of the natives, especially when he bears in mind, that those who do not shave their heads, walk uncovered under the hot sun of their clime. I had some curiosity to find out the secret of this. They use on their hair twice a-week the juice of limes, obtained by boiling them, and then dress it with an oil pressed cold from the queen cocoa, scented with “citronella,” a very singular and powerful perfume which they distil on the island. Sixty drops of the citronella is sufficient to perfume a bottle of the oil of considerable size.

Should you sleep ashore at the hotel, you are awoke at an early hour and informed that “bathing” is ready. Accoutred in a Lazarus-like robe, generally known as a sheet, you bid the heathen lead the way, and you follow to an outhouse constructed of bamboo and mats. Here two fellows pour cold water over you from copper “monkeys,” in such quick succession, that the most inexorable disciple of Priessnitz, would be soon forced to cry peccavi. Encased in the Lazarus garment you flee into your chamber. You are pursued here by a heathen, who tells you “me barber,” and proceeds to shave one side of the face at a time, shampoos your head with lime-juice, and then withdraws in favor of another idol-worshipping attendant, who mollifies you with a cup of fine coffee. The pleasant persecution over, you sleep again.

The news is conveyed from Point de Galle to Colombo by a pigeon-express, none of your “fly away to my native land, sweet dove,” business, with billet-doux, and riband around neck, but despatches, which are tied to the feet of the bird, who in flying draws them up under him, and in that way the paper is kept from a wetting, should it rain. The birds from one point are sent to the other by a coach, and not being fed in this strange cote, upon being turned out with their despatch they fly home. They fly seventy-two miles in an hour and three quarters.

This is an outline of modern Ceylon. The men who “bow down to wood and stone” here will tell you, that the footprints of a man, in stone, on the top of a mountain, is the footprint of their God, where he stepped over to the main land; but it is called Adam’s Peak, and the Mussulmen say that Adam and Eve dwelt there. They will tell you that Paradise was in the Seventh Heaven, and that Adam and Eve were expelled by the command, “Get you down, the one of you an enemy to the other, and there shall be a dwelling-place for you on earth.” Adam fell on Ceylon, or Suendib, and Eve at Joddah on the Red sea, and after two hundred years the angel Gabriel conducted Adam to where Eve was, and they came and dwelt in Ceylon.

Before leaving Point de Galle, a green boat came alongside, bearing an elephant flag, out of which came the captain of a Siamese man-of-war, to pay a visit of courtesy. He was quite a young-looking man, dressed in a red jacket with a yellow silk skirt. Behind him walked an attendant bearing a pearl box in his hand. One of our midshipmen thought this must contain his “character.” As he spoke but Siamese, and our commodore did not speak Siamese, the interview must have been quite satisfactory.

On the 15th of March we left Point de Galle, and headed across the bay of Bengal, in the direction of the northwest end of Sumatra. We did not take in our entire quantity of coal at Ceylon, but got on board fifty tons of the wood of the place, to try the experiment of its burning in our furnaces. It did not answer; the expense of consumption per hour was twenty dollars, while coal would have been about six, and producing less steam, while it induced greater danger of setting fire to the ship. In our run across the bay of Bengal we had a smooth sea, hot weather, and moonlight nights. In five days we were off the island of Nicobar, and entered the straits of Malacca, the weather changing to squally and rainy. Here we passed the English oriental mail-steamer from China, having on board commodore Aulick, whose late command of the East India squadron was soon to be assumed by the commodore aboard of our ship. Our run through the straits of Malacca was not signalized by any remarkable incidents. We saw the shore on either hand at times; passed in sight of the English East India penal settlement, Pulo-Penang, and close aboard of some most lovely tropical islands, anchored at night, and caught some red fish; made lay to, and frightened half to death, the captain of a Malay boat, called a parrigue, who had been manoeuvring very suspiciously about nine at night, by firing a couple of muskets at him; and received and returned a salute. This was the English frigate Cleopatra, in tow of an East India Company’s steamer, one day’s run from Singapore. As they neared, the frigate broke stops with an American flag at the fore, and let slip with twenty-one guns. The old Mississippi was not to be caught napping, and although we had to lower away our quarter boats to prevent their injury by the concussion from our large guns, we soon had flying the English ensign at the fore, and replied with twenty-one. It is not the greater part of a century, that an American man-of-war would have been allowed to pass without any such national courtesy being shown by an Englishman. As the two vessels passed under our stern and stood on their way, our band gave them in its best style, “God save the Queen!”

At one o’clock in the day we were boarded by a native pilot, who brought from the consul at Singapore a letter-bag for us. It was the first news we had gotten directly, since leaving the United States, then out eighty days, and almost antipodal to our homes, and no one but he who has experienced it can appreciate fully the joy of getting a letter at such a time. It was the first that had come to me away from my own land, and I could have hallooed.

In the afternoon we rounded in among some beautiful islands, standing like verdure indexes to the harbor, and soon after anchored in the English free port of Singapore, about two miles from the shore.

And first the boats—yes, the boats. There are no more characteristic things of a people than their water vehicles. The enormous “Himalaya” steamship is the card that Great Britain sends out upon the ocean; the magnificent clipper-ships of our own America, as they ride at anchor in the “gorgeous East,” or the world over, as impatient steeds to break their tether, not in comparison, but outstripping by contrast far the naval architecture of any other people, do not evince the onward and upward march of the United States, more fully than does the stupid, cumbersome, unsightly junk, show the inertia of the opinionated Mongolian.

The Malay boats around the ship soon after we arrived, were most symmetrical in proportion, and pretty to look at. They are “dug-outs,” rather crank, but beautifully and sharply modelled. The song of the native rowers is quite strange, and far from unpleasing. The man who sits behind you in the sharp stern, steering with a paddle, pitches his voice, and gives the key-note of the “barbaric pearl” ditty (that is, I supposed, it must have been something about barbaric pearls), goes on with the burden, and the two rowers amidships, rather indifferent to the fact that the unsteadiness of their boat does not suit you, musically chorus, “A—lah! A—lah! El—lel—la!” Their larger boats called prahus, with their graceful latine sails, move with great rapidity through the water, and are said to be as elegantly modelled as any yacht “America.” Indeed, some are of the opinion that the fast modern pleasure-boat, owes its origin to the prahus of the Malay.

Thackeray, in his “Cornhill to Cairo,” has most pleasantly and truly described the keen relish which is afforded to travel if one could be taken up, and suddenly translated—or immersed as it were—among a people entirely different in complexion, habit, and costume, from his own. Unfortunately you are deprived of this in the East; your arrival at one place is continually anticipating another; and so at Singapore, most unwillingly, you get too large a slice of the picture, too much foretaste of the grand “central,” “celestial,” “flowery,” “middle kingdom,” though in a few days’ run of China. The first thing that met our gaze, laying in shore of us, their unsightly masts unshipped, their large sails under cover, their high stems and decks in the shadow of mats and bamboo, waiting for a change of the monsoon that they might go back to Quangtung or Fungching, were moored the ungainly Chinese junks. Of course, as is invariably the case, even on their smaller boats, from either side of the square bow peers the big painted eye; and if the stranger should be curious enough to inquire why they are put there, the matter-of-fact Chinaman, with a “Hy-yah,”—more expressive than the shoulder shrug of the Frenchman—would make answer, “No hab eye, how can see?”

On landing, the Chinese features of the place are found to predominate over all others, though the population of the town is also composed of English merchants, Malays, Arabs, Jews, Parsees, Hindoos, &c., amounting in all to about forty thousand. You no sooner put foot on the stairs that lead from the little bridged river, which equally divides the city, than your ears are filled with the interminable banging of gongs, more terrific than those which broke on the tympanum of Mr. Benjamin Bowbell when he was going to be buried alive with an Eastern princess. If a Chinese funeral is progressing, the gong is heard, if some mart has just been opened, or a public sale is to take place, beat the gong, and at sundown from the junk, “Joss” is “chin-chinn’d” by gong-beating. The streets present a scene of much bustle and activity, and traversing them are the most grotesque and picturesque oriental costumes—the large tassel pendent from the Fez cap of the Parsee, of as bright a scarlet, or his loose vest of as deep a blue, and the handle of his pipe just as long, as others that I had seen at prior places.

On the eastern side of the town, fronting on a fine parade or drive, are the residences principally of the Europeans, with the exception of some who have their bungaloes near the suburbs. Here are also situated government-offices, a very plain-looking Protestant church, whose swinging fans mitigate the intense heat to the worshipping congregation; a very fine hotel, under whose pleasant mahogany—located in arbored buildings, kept cool by moving punkas—we so agreeably placed our knees, to enjoy fine fruits, and for a time, keep from the rays of a torrid sun; and a pyramidal column, whose inscription tells in English, Arabic, and Hindostanee, how grateful the people there resident are for the service rendered them, while a prominent member of the East India Company’s government, by one Earl Dalhousie. He may be a scion of Pope’s

“Next comes Dalhousie,” &c.

On the esplanade, when the sun pales his fire in the evening, a tesselated group composed of the juvenile cockney, the Cingalese, the Parsee, and, of course, “John Chinaman,” take their evening promenade, while the wealthier natives who have been snoozing all day come out in their gigs for a drive. Those of more moderate pretensions, who can muster a halfrupee, get into a palanquin—pronounced palankee—for the purpose. These are small four-wheeled vehicles with mat cushions, capable of holding four persons. The turbaned and waist-scarfed Lascar driver, though he has a seat apportioned him, and sufficient reins, prefers coiling them over his arms, takes his little horse by the cheek of the bit, and running beside him, continually encourages him into a gallop. Some meddling English, with accompanying mistaken philanthropy, endeavored to get an order passed by which the dear syces should be made to save themselves fatigue and ride on their seats, but the dear syces preferred their old custom, and protested strongly against any such innovation. About a mile from the settlement are a large collection of houses occupied by the Malays, who, although under the protection of the English, still continue their custom of building their houses over the water, elevated on posts and separately, that they may feel freer from attack, or the visits of live animals. These latter they have not much to dread now. Singapore is on an island separated from the main land by a narrow strip of water, and tigers sometimes swim over, but they are soon despatched, as the government pays a reward of a hundred dollars for each one killed. On my ride to this point I passed some tombs of former rajahs, and also saw a number of wooden houses that were being fitted up for shipment to Australia. We stopped at a factory where that pleasant farina, sago, was being prepared. It is made from the pith of a tree; is first placed in vats that it may become dissolved, then exposed to the sun to dry, after which any foreign substance is removed by sifting, when it is packed, ready for exportation, at three dollars and sixty cents per pecul. The proprietor was a very polite and good-natured old Chinaman; by-the-by, nearly all Chinamen are very good-natured: kick “John Chinaman,” and smile as you do it, and he will smile too; do it with a frown, and he becomes very indignant. The old fellow had the customary number of hogs, whose quarters, whatever may be said of the want of cleanliness of their celestial owner’s house, receive great attention.

Not far from here we went through the ward of a hospital for English sailors, and also another for Chinese, whose inmates were lying on elevated and inclined shelves, the victims of every terrible disease of the climate.

The Joss-house at Singapore is as fine, though it may be not as large, as any to be seen in China. An elaborately-designed and gaudily-ornamented pagoda, of colored porcelain, rises from its centre; its doorway is guarded by two gorgons dire, in a sitting posture, in whose snarling mouths large balls have been ingeniously carved, so that you may place your hand between the teeth and roll them about, yet the whole is cut from a block of blue flinty granite. The court and alley are paved with colored porcelain tiles, while the altar and the sleepy idol that fills its rear, are decorated expensively and fantastically. One of the wings of this temple, from which issued a more cook-shop than savory smell, I noticed was appropriated as a kind of popular restaurant, and filled with Chinamen down to the lower cooly, all seated at small tables, uttering their mushy jargon, and bolting with chop-sticks the boiled paddy. Their proximity to their “Joss-pigeon” neither restrained their appetites nor their noisiness. “John Chinaman” will tell you that “Joss” (a word which they are supposed to have gotten by a corruption of “Dios” from their Portuguese neighbors at Macao) is a very good man, but that there is no reason why he should have a large temple all to himself. Opposite the temple I saw the first Chinese “Sing-Song,” a street-theatre, made by the elevation of a staging of bamboos covered with mats. Upon “these our players,” gaudily attired, and accompanied by caterwauling instruments and “tom-toms,” appear to the infinite delight of their street auditors, who guffaw loud their approval, as they stand protected from the sun under their paper umbrellas.

At Singapore is the prison in which nearly all the convicts from the possessions of the English are confined, and a collection of more villanous visages could not be met with in the walls of any other jail. Those who have been convicted of murder, have the word “Doomga”—Hindostanee for their crime— branded on their forehead. Those who have been guilty of lesser offences are put into chain-gangs, and made to keep the road in order. There was one inmate, in the person of a negro, from Long Island, who had been sentenced for fifteen years.

Singapore was established by the English as a competitor for the trade of the Dutch at Batavia, in the East Indian Archipelago, and being declared a free port, has accomplished the desired result to a very great degree. Numbers of prahus, that can play pirating or trading as the opportunity presents, come there, bringing their commodities, but principally that they may get powder and shot, to play Lambro with neighboring Dyaks. It was founded in 1819, and settled with the consent of the rajah of Johore, a part of whose possessions it was. This rajah still receives a large annuity from the English, and resides in the vicinity of the place. With a friend I drove out to his place. The building was a plain one, fronted with a verandah, and the entrance ornamented with two little brass howitzers. We were received by the rajah’s son, who spoke a little English. He was gaudily attired in turban made by wrapping a parti-colored kerchief about the head, from his side hung a handsomely-mounted dagger, and he also sported a fine gold watch. His features were quite handsome for a Malay. We were ushered into an upper room, at one end of which, on a sofa, with his feet drawn up under him, similarly attired with himself, sat his father the rajah, and his brother whom we understood to be a “sultan” of some neighboring province or country. On the table in front of them lay their krisses, the hilts inlaid with costly jewels. They were quite jolly-looking old fellows, and had a great many questions to ask about the mission on which our ship was bound, &c., but the defective translation of his son made the business of answering a slow one. Before leaving him he caused tea and sweetmeats to be brought in, and joined us quite sociably. The next day his son paid us a visit aboard ship.

On the 29th of March, we left Singapore, and in a short time were heading our course in the China sea. On the 2d of April the heat became very oppressive. What little breeze moved on the water was aft, and the steamer moving faster than it, the windsails which led to the lower quarters of the ship afforded no comfort, and hung collapsed from their halyard. Some of our firemen; whose duties always severely onerous, but particularly so in those burning latitudes, fainted as they stood in the fire-room while feeding their furnaces. Such is the exhausting effect of the climate on those engaged by the peninsular and oriental steamers, that engineers and firemen, it is said, are rotated at intervals, with those engaged on the more healthy part of the route on the other side of the isthmus of Suez. The greatest mortality among them arises from diseases of the liver.

“All Fools’ Day” is not forgotten on shipboard. The better to remember it in the younger messes, it is set apart for the celebration of the caterer’s birthday (of course the caterer is born on that day); the table is spread in the best way, and not until the caterer’s health has been proposed in sherry—“a bumpers and no heel-taps”—and the wine-glasses emptied, does the choking sensation remind the uninitiated that he has bolted a wine-glass of rather strong whiskey.

In two or three days the weather suddenly changed to blanket temperature; we ran into a heavy head sea; the spray was chilly, and the sun sank as if in the cold gray of autumn. On the morning of the 6th April, the Ladrone islands appeared in sight, and we ran into a fleet of some three hundred Chinese fishing boats—we were off the shores of the Middle Kingdom. The sight of these awkward boats, with their build, showing what travellers to Cathay have called the celestial propensity to “reverse” everything, was an interesting one. But why say the Chinese reverse? They had a national existence, when these our moderns were not even in embryo; their laws had an existence long before the code of Lycurgus was promulged, and their hieroglyphic record goes away back to a period which our own sacred revelation does not compass, so it is we who reverse. John Chinaman knows that though the stern of his boat is broad and high; that its bow runs wedge-like and low; that his masts, instead of raking aft, lean forward; and if his boat, under sail, look as if she was going to run under, still that she has borne him safely when many a “ty-fung” blew. We wished a pilot, but in answer to the inquiry whether any could furnish one, they nodded assent, and held up fish and some rice. The weather being thick we ran in under one of the Ladrones and anchored for the night in thirty fathoms water, and fired a gun for a pilot. The next morning at daybreak, we ran in and anchored in the roadstead of the old Portuguese city of Macao, about four miles from the shore. Though the turbid water all around, and the naked islands that encompassed the anchorage, did not afford a prospect calculated to prepossess one with his first glance at the “Flowery Kingdom,” still we had a feeling of gladness that after an almost uninterrupted run of over four months we had reached our goal, or the region which was to be the theatre of our movements—yes, for months.

Our stoppage was short; after communicating with the navy store-keeper and the authorities ashore, receiving an official visit from the Portuguese captain of the port, and procuring a Chinese pilot, we lifted anchor, and stood over for the more flourishing English colonial town of Hong Kong. We reached this place after doubling through denuded steep islands, about seven o’clock in the evening. The ships of the East India squadron lying in the harbor, who having had some intimation of our proximity to the station by the mail-steamers from Ceylon, were on the qui vive for our approach. The old Mississippi, with the broad pennant at her masthead, no sooner emerged from behind the western point of the island, than the “Saratoga” and “Plymouth” sloops-of-war hoisted their numbers and saluted. The storeship, “Supply,” we also found there. Our ship was soon filled by brother American officers from the other ships, come to salute and welcome old friends, and hoping that the mail-bags we had from the United States, had brought each one “good news from home.” The meetings were so joyous and so cordial that we did not remember that they were taking place on the other side of the globe. Officers from the English and French men-of-war also came aboard to pay their respects.

The oriental salute seldom consists of more than three guns, and many of the natives of the East are unable to see why this number should be fired; they can not comprehend why you should burn in compliment the same material, which you would employ in sending deadly missiles at them, if in anger. But we, Christian nations, manage things differently; and the next day after our arrival told it: from the rising to the setting of the sun nearly, it was powder burning. Upon hoisting the colors at eight o’clock we saluted the town with twenty-one guns, and twenty-one were returned by a water-battery; the French saluted us and we saluted them; then came the admiral and commodorial salutes, English and French, which were returned in the old style by letting fall fore-top sails the while; and so that day the noise of one hundred and seventy-nine guns, broke and tumbled along the naked hills of Hong Kong, with nearly as splendid an effect as at St. Helena.

The harbor of Hong Kong is a very commodious and well-sheltered one, in the shape of a half-moon, and its three entrances of Green Island, Cap-sing-moon, and Lymoon passages, can not be seen from its centre. On a shelf which makes a circular sweep, cut at the base of towering volcanic hills, is built the town named in honor of the present sovereign of Great Britain. Victoria, from the water, presents a fine appearance, with its stuccoed warehouses, or “go-downs,” at the beach, and the private residences and churches rising from plateaus made by immense labor above; and the massive stone government offices and barracks that appear on the left, tell how firmly the English plant their foot in the East, and how triumph, with them, is synonymous with occupancy of a slice of an enemy’s territory. This colony is the result of their opium war in China. Our stay was short: the commodore despatched the “Plymouth” to Shanghae, and, in the Mississippi, ran over to Macao, an inland run of thirty-nine miles.