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. Sonnerat says he has ascertained them to be no more than seventy-five thousand;[105] but as this gentleman has not favoured us with the grounds on which his calculation was founded, and, besides, appears as desirous of depreciating every thing that relates to the Chinese, as the Jesuits may be of magnifying, his opinion certainly admits of some doubt. The following circumstances may perhaps lead the reader to form a judgment with tolerable accuracy on this subject.