January 1st, 1861.-This is the first time I sign the new year.  May it bring much happiness to you!...  It was introduced here by dancing.  But I was not in a lively humour, and retired as soon as I could....  No mail yet, and I would start without it, were it not that I expect three mails by it.

[Sidenote:  Hong-Kong.]

At length, on the 4th of January, he writes, ’Hurrah!  I am off, with a fair wind.’  On the 8th he reached Hong-Kong, where he found little to detain him; the most important matter being the formal taking possession, in the Queen’s name, of the recently ceded peninsula of Kowloon.

Hong-Kong.—­January 10th.—­I presume, from the apologetic tone of a speech (very civil in itself) made by Lord J. Russell in the city, and quoted in the ‘Home News,’ that I was being well abused in England when the mail left.  It is all miserable enough, but I had rather that it had blown over before I reach home, as I might seem to reflect on others if I defended myself, and you say truly that we have had enough of that kind of thing.

    January 15th.—­I find that the new Factory site [at Canton], about
    which I had such a fight with the merchants last time, is a great
    success.[1] Its merit is now acknowledged by the blindest.

In a subsequent letter, referring to the last days of his stay at Hong-Kong, he wrote:-

[Sidenote:  Kowloon.]

We had a sort of ceremonial on Saturday the 19th.  I went to Kowloon, and proclaimed formally the annexation of that territory to the dominions of the Queen.  This acquisition, the good site at Canton, and the opening-up of the North of China and Japan, have added at least twenty per cent. to the value of European life in China.

[Sidenote:  Adieu to China.]

On the 21st of January he bade a final adieu to the shores of China, and directed his course to Manila; desiring to avoid this time the dreary line to Singapore which he had traversed so often, and attracted also by the new fields which the Spanish and Dutch colonies offered for his observation.

[Sidenote:  Manila.]

At Sea, near Manila.—­January 24th.—­I wrote a very shabby line to you as I was leaving Hong-Kong, but it may not perhaps be an unwelcome one, as it informed you I had started.  We have had rough weather, and I take up my pen to-day for the first time.  We are now under the lee of some of the Philippines, so we get less of the great swell which has been rolling down from the north-east, and of the gale which blows during this monsoon down the channel that separates the island of Formosa from the Philippines as through a funnel.

Manila.—­January 26th, Eight A.M.—­I sent off a few lines to you yesterday, to tell you of my very inopportune arrival off this town, at a moment when all the world, functionaries, &c., are on tiptoe expecting