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.

Canton, including the old and new town, and the suburbs, is about ten miles
in circuit. With respect to its population, if one may judge of the whole,
from what is seen in the suburbs, I should conceive it to fall considerably
short of an European town of the same magnitude. Le Comte estimated the
number of inhabitants at one million five hundred thousand; Du Halde at one
million; and M.