want to fight, but they will not accept the
position relatively to the strangers under which alone strangers will
consent to live with them, till the strength of the two parties has
been tested by fighting. The English do want to fight.

[Sidenote: Yeh's reply.]

_December 18th._--This does not promise to be a lively sojourn. We are
anchored at present at a point where the river forks into the Whampoa
and Blenheim reaches. We have the Blenheim reach, and my suite wish me
to go up it to the Macao Fort, from which they think they would have a
good view of what goes on when the city is attacked. I wish, however,
to be with Gros, and he will go up the Whampoa reach as far as his
great lumbering ship will go. Meanwhile we are here confined to our
ships, as it would not of course do for me to go on shore to be
caught. Poor Yeh would think me worth having at present. What will he
do? His answer is very weak, and reads as if the writer was at his
wits' end; but with that sort of stupid Chinese policy which consists
in never yielding anything, he exposes himself to the worst
consequences without making any preparations (so far as we can see)
for resistance. Among other things in his letter he quotes a long
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!