them all behind at Silver Island, to their great satisfaction. For my own people I had no particular use, but I did wish some of the boatmen to volunteer. I had presently cause to regret not having taken a couple, whether they liked or not; for the wind we started with failed us soon, and our Englishmen could not work the sculls at all, while at the novel labour of tracking and poling inshore, they proved very inexpert. When we had, with great difficulty, got up to within three quarters of a mile of the high promontory, the Pih koo Hill, I determined to land and walk the rest of the way. Besides the wish to save time, we saw a party of the Tae pings stationing themselves about midway down the nearly perpendicular face of the promontory over the water, where they were flashing off their matchlocks; and I thought if the whole boatload of us went up together they might fire, which they were not likely to do if a single man approached. Mr. Spratt volunteered to accompany me instead of following in the boat; which then received orders to remain where it was, unless a signal was made for it to follow. When we got near the foot of the Hill, we found our progress impeded by ditches, and palisades of pointed stakes; in addition to which the ways of access were stuck all over with short pointed pieces of split bamboo, which would have formed a serious obstacle to the advance of Chinese soldiers with their bare ankles and either no chaussure at all or only straw sandals. A number of the Tae pings had come out on to the hill side, and a few descended a zigzag path, reserved on its carefully scarped face. To the nearest of these I called to aid us through the labyrinth we had entered, and which looked as if it contained trous de loup. The man approached, when we scrambled, under his guidance, up to the foot of the new wall, crept through an embrasure on a level with the ground, and so entered the fortifications of Chin keang. The heat was excessive; and I am convinced that one fifth part of the exposure and fatigue which I underwent in this expedition would, if endured in some monotonous routine work

X

for which I had no liking, have certainly killed me in my then impaired state of health. It was in the same month of July, exactly ten years before, that the British forces stormed this city, when, as Sir John Davis states, "the excessive heat of the weather tended greatly to aggravate the toils of the day, and the deaths from the effects of the sun were about as numerous as those from the enemy.” *

Within the exterior wall, we found a few old Kwang se Tae pings superintending the completion of the works at this key of their position on the river. They ordered a spearman to conduct us to the Commandant. With him we descended the western face of the Pih koo Hill, and crossed the plain between the river and the walls of the city; which we entered by the North gate. Nanking, which I had traversed two months before, had a very desolate appearance; the women and the children being all quartered in streets through which we were not led; the male population being nearly all engaged in military duties and labours at the exterior fortifications; and no trade being possible from the fact that the Tae pings had seized everything. Still the bulk of their forces being there, and in particular all the higher leaders, the streets did show signs of life. But those of Chin keang were the most complete picture of desolation I ever beheld. There were no inhabitants; the few women taken in the place had been removed to Nanking; and it now contained only a garrison of some three thousand men, nearly all of whom were necessarily located, night and day, at the exterior defences. The doors and wooden window-shutters of the houses and shops had been employed in the construction of the river stockades; and as we passed through street after street without meeting a soul, we stopped occasionally to inspect the empty dwellings. On the floor of a room in one we noticed a large heap of good rice. The Tae ping Commandant, Lo ta kang, occupied the fine Yamun, the quarters of the former Imperialist Commandant, the Lieutenant-General of the Tartar Banner

* China, during the War and since the Peace.

man. As we neared these head-quarters signs of life began to show themselves again. At length we escaped from the glare of the blazing sun on the stone flagging of the streets into one of the spacious ante-halls of the Yamun; where I signalized my advent by drinking three or four cups of tea in rapid succession. While Lo ta kang was preparing to receive the unexpected visitors, the old Tae pings not on duty collected in the hall where we were. From the emissaries met on the Grand Canal, I knew there were not more than three hundred of them in Chin keang; and I now saw a large proportion of that number before me. They were, without exception, dressed in the simplest and plainest clothing, viz., black Chinese jackets and trousers. Amidst all the variety of figure and feature, there was invariably the grave and earnest demeanour and expression naturally to be expected in men who had for three years been engaged in an unremitting fight for their existence. After a while the folding-doors at the back of the hall in which we were seated were thrown open, music struck up, and we were ushered through one or two more halls into the presence of Commandant Lo, who received us in his full yellow and red uniform. He at once recognised me as the person who, two months before, had landed from the Hermes, to speak to him after we had been firing at each other. He said no foreign deserters had come within his position, nor had any foreigners been observed directing the guns fired from the Imperialist camps against the city. After this formal matter had been discussed, we had some conversation on other subjects, military and religious. I inquired how it was that the Tae pings did not make greater use of the smaller firearms, muskets and pistols, the former of which I said were, with the attached bayonet, our chief arms? I was induced to ask this because, while there was a great demand among the Tae ping soldiers for swords, they seemed to take little interest. in guns. Lo said, that his people did not understand the use of them, and that they were valueless when the supply

of ammunition ran out or the springs went wrong. Swords and spears, he said, seldom got out of order, were easily repaired, and he found that his people could always beat the Imperialists with them. Some "tens" of his men had, he said, sallied out the day before to drive off some two or three hundred of the Imperialists who were advancing too close to the walls, and had made them run with ease. He said, "I am beginning to get old now, but give me a good spear, and I am still not afraid to meet any ten of them." There seemed to be a very intimate relation-almost a filial relationbetween his black-clothed followers and himself. Some fifty to a hundred of them were standing in the hall opposite to where I was sitting, and Lo, casting a glance over them, asked if I thought they looked like men who could “ conquer the rivers and the mountains?" I asked him how it was that both at Chin keang and Nanking they allowed such large numbers of the Imperialists to encamp in their immediate vicinity; and why they did not concentrate their forces and rout them? He replied, that he should merely act on the defensive till intelligence came of the final success of the Tae ping army that had marched to the North; when he would sally out and attack his besiegers in their camps. He volunteered the statement that the Tae pings had not advanced on Soo chow and Shanghae, because they wished to avoid, as much as possible, whatever might cause interruption to the commercial operations of the season. In saying this there was no pretence of extreme friendly feeling. It simply meant, "You see, where we can avoid it, we are willing to spare your countrymen loss." He and all his people received us as persons in no way hostile to him, and with a civility that appeared to cost them no effort; but he intimated that it would be better if we refrained from passing to and fro between the Tae pings and the Imperialists, as he was apprehensive the latter might put some of us to death, and then say his people had done it. He had the delicacy to refrain from saying, what circumstances would have justified, viz.,

that some of us might come nominally as friends, in reality as spies. Lo appeared to be about fifty years of age; he was middle-sized as to height, and squarely built, without, however, being remarkably broad. He said he had "seen us fight" some twelve years before at Canton; and his manner implied that we did it well. It had, I know, excited the admiration of the Cantonese at that time, that the English soldiers, when they advanced to storm the detached forts at the back of the city, "came on the faster, the more they were fired at."

When we took leave of Lo, horses were furnished us, and an escort appointed to take us back to the Pih koo Hill. At my request, a man accompanied us with a large bundle of Tae ping books. We issued by the same embrasure by which we had entered, and which was in full view of several Imperial camps and of the whole Imperial fleet. A number of the Tae pings issued with us, and spread themselves along the brow of the hill. From the nearest Imperial camp a shot was fired at a high elevation. It was intended doubtless for the crowd on the hill, though it fell with a flop into the muddy ground of a rice field which my companion and I with the man carrying the books were just then passing. Spratt having noticed the spying face of a man among the reeds, which, as they considerably overtopped my head on both sides of the path, might easily contain an Imperialist picket, I soon shouldered the books myself, and made our isolated Tae ping return, after rewarding him with my umbrella; which several of his comrades had anxiously asked me if I was willing to sell to them. We reached the boat and our little squadron at Silver Island without adventure.

I there found some of superintendent Lin's boats. The mandarins, though their own threats had deterred my people from accompanying me, would, I knew, now only be too glad to find out through them what I had seen and done. I therefore observed absolute silence, and gave orders for our immediate return to Shanghae. We reached that place,