extract from a Hong-kong paper describing Sir G. Bonham’s investiture as K.C.B., and advises me to imitate him for my own interest, rather than Sir J. Davis, who was recalled.  Davis, says Yeh, insisted on getting into the city, and Bonham gave up this demand.  Hence his advice to me.  All through the letter is sheer twaddle.

[Sidenote:  Advance on Canton.]

December 22nd.—­On the afternoon of the 20th, I got into a gunboat with Commodore Elliot, and went a short way up towards the barrier forts, which were last winter destroyed by the Americans.  When we reached this point, all was so quiet that we determined to go on, and we actually steamed past the city of Canton, along the whole front, within pistol-shot of the town.  A line of English men-of-war are now anchored there in front of the town.  I never felt so ashamed of myself in my life, and Elliot remarked that the trip seemed to have made me sad.  There we were, accumulating the means of destruction under the very eyes, and within the reach, of a population of about 1,000,000 people, against whom these means of destruction were to be employed!  ‘Yes,’ I said to Elliot, ’I am sad, because when I look at that town, I feel that I am earning for myself a place in the Litany, immediately after “plague, pestilence, and famine."’ I believe however that, as far as I am concerned, it was impossible for me to do otherwise than as I have done.  I could not have abandoned the demand to enter the city after what happened last winter, without compromising our position in China altogether, and opening the way to calamities even greater than those now before us.  I made my demands on Yeh as moderate as I could, so as to give him a chance of accepting; although, if he had accepted, I knew that I should have brought on my head the imprecations both of the navy and army and of the civilians, the time being given by the missionaries and the women.  And now Yeh having refused, I shall do whatever I can possibly do to secure the adoption of plans of attack, &c., which will lead to the least destruction of life and property....  The weather is charming; the thermometer about 60 deg. in the shade in the morning; the sun powerful, and the atmosphere beautifully clear.  When we steamed up to Canton, and saw the rich alluvial banks covered with the luxuriant evidences of unrivalled industry and natural fertility combined; beyond them, barren uplands, sprinkled with a soil of a reddish tint, which gave them the appearance of heather slopes in the Highlands; and beyond these again, the white cloud mountain range, standing out bold and blue in the clear sunshine,—­I thought bitterly of those who, for the most selfish objects, are trampling under foot this ancient civilisation.

[Sidenote:  Summons to Yeh.]