As Canton was likely to be the most advantageous market for furs, I was desired by Captain Gore to carry with me about twenty sea-otters’ skins, chiefly the property of our deceased commanders, and to dispose of them at the best price I could procure; a commission which gave me an opportunity of becoming a little acquainted with the genius of the Chinese for trade.  Having acquainted some of the English supercargoes with these circumstances, I desired them to recommend me to some Chinese merchant of credit and reputation, who would at once offer me a fair and reasonable price.  I was accordingly directed to a member of the Hong; a society of the principal merchants of the place; who being fully informed of the nature of the business, appeared sensible of the delicacy of my situation; assured me I might depend on his integrity; and that, in a case of this sort, he should consider himself merely as an agent, without looking for any profit to himself.  Having laid my goods before him, he examined them with great care, over and over again, and at last told me, that he could not venture to offer more than three hundred dollars for them.  As I knew, from the price our skins had sold for in Kamtschatka, that he had not offered me one-half their value, I found myself under the necessity of driving a bargain.  In my turn, I therefore demanded one thousand; my Chinese then advanced to five hundred; then offered me a private present of tea and porcelain, amounting to one hundred more; then the same sum in money; and, lastly, rose to seven hundred dollars, on which I fell to nine hundred.  Here, each side declaring he would not recede, we parted; but the Chinese soon returned with a list of India goods, which he now proposed I should take in exchange, and which, I was afterwards told, would have amounted in value, if honestly delivered, to double the sum he had before offered.  Finding I did not choose to deal in this mode, he proposed as his ultimatum, that we should divide the difference, which, being tired of the contest, I consented to, and received the eight hundred dollars.

The ill health, which at this time I laboured under, left me little reason to lament the very narrow limits within which the policy of the Chinese obliges every European at Canton to confine his curiosity.  I should otherwise have fell exceedingly tantalized with living under the walls of so great a city, full of objects of novelty, without being able to enter it.  The accounts given on this place, by Peres le Comte and Du Halde, are in every one’s hand.  These authors have lately been accused of great exaggeration by M. Sonnerat; for which reason, the following observations, collected from the information with which I have been obligingly furnished by several English gentlemen, who were a long time resident at Canton, may not be unacceptable to the public.