one's guide in this intricate navigation! _Five
P.M._--We found a channel in about an hour, and came on swimmingly to
Kew-kiang. From the water it looked imposing enough. An enclosing wall
of about five miles in circuit, and in tolerable condition. I landed
at 3 P.M. What a scene of desolation within the wall! It seems to have
suffered even more than Chin-kiang Foo. A single street running
through a wilderness of weeds and ruins. The people whom we questioned
said the Rebels did it all. The best houses we found were outside the
city in the suburb. We were of course very strange in a town where the
European dress has never been seen, but the people were as usual
perfectly good-natured, delighted to converse with Lay, and highly
edified by his jokes. We did some commissariat business. We had with
us only Mexican dollars, and when we offered them at the first shop
the man said he did not like them as he did not know them. Lay said,
'Come to the ship and we will give you Sycee instead.' 'See how just
they are,' said a man in the crowd to his neighbour; 'they do not
force their coin upon him.' This kind of ready recognition of moral
worth is quite Chinese, and nothing will convince me that a people who
have this quality so marked are to be managed only by brutality and
violence.

[Sidenote: Difficult navigation.]
[Sidenote: Highland scenery.]

_December 1st.--1.30 P.M._--We have just anchored. About an hour ago,
we turned sharply to our left, and found on that hand a series of red
sand-bluffs leading to a range of considerable blue hills which faced
us in the distance; the river, as has been the case since we left the
Rebel country, was covered with small country junks, and here and
there a mandarin one, covered with flags, and with its highly-polished
brass gun in the prow. The scene had become more interesting, but the
navigation more difficult, for the gunboats began hoisting '3' and
'4,' and all manner of ominous numbers. So we had: 'Hands to the port
anchor,' 'slower,' and 'as slow as possible,' 'a turn astern,' and
after a variety of fluctuations, 'drop the anchor.' _Six P.M._--We had
to go a short way back, and to pass, moreover, a very shallow bit of
the river; that done we went on briskly, and bore down upon the
mountain range which we descried in the forenoon. At about four we
ca