the Yang-tze-kiang, which
is inhabited by a population the most inoffensive, perhaps, both by
disposition and habit, of any on the surface of the earth. Their
amenity towards the foreigner is due, I apprehend, to temperament, as
much, at least, as to the recollection of the violence which they may
have sustained at his hands.

I have made it a point, whenever I have met missionaries or others who
have penetrated into the interior from Ningpo and Shanghae, to ask
them what treatment they experienced on those expeditions, and the
answer has almost invariably been that, at points remote from those to
which foreigners have access, there was no diminution, but on the
contrary rather an enhancement, of the courtesy exhibited towards them
by the natives.

[Sidenote: Missionary schools.]

_H.M.S. 'Furious.'--March 20th._--Yesterday, I called on a clergyman
to see Miss Aldersey,--a remarkable lady, who came out here
immediately after the last war, and has been devoting herself and her
fortune to the education and Christianisation of the Chinese at
Ningpo. She seems a nice person, but I could not get as much
conversation with her as I wished, because the Bishop, &c., were
present all the time. She has to pay the girls a trifle, as an
equivalent for what their labour is worth, for coming to her school,
or to board them and keep them, as it is not at all in the ideas of
the Chinese that women should be educated. She does not seem to have
got the _entree_ into Chinese houses of the richer class. Mrs. Russell
(wife of the English clergyman), who speaks the language, has obtained
it a little. I cannot make out that, when she visits them, they ever
talk of anything except where she got her dress, &c.; but on great
occasions, when they assemble for ceremonies in the temples, they seem
very devout. In private they treat these matters with great
indifference. I had some of the missionaries to dinner. They put the
converts at a larger number than I understood Mr. Russell to do, but
otherwise their report did not differ materially from his.

[Sidenote: Chusan.]
[Sidenote: French missionary.]

_Chusan.--March 21st._--This is a most charming island. How any
people, in their senses, could have preferred Hong-Kong to it, seems
incredible. The people too, that is to say, the lower orders, seem
really t