No one will deny that the task about to be undertaken is an arduous one; yet, after having carefully weighed all its difficulties, we cannot help feeling sanguine of a successful issue. A good maritime police is the secret of government in China. If the water-ways of China are in a state of security and order, peace will re-establish itself everywhere. The rivers, the seas, and lakes and canals, within the area of the Empire, cut it up into such sections that rebellion will be destroyed in detail, or rather starve, directly a strong executive is placed upon the Emperor’s waters. The Taepings and other banditti spread over the area they have devastated, by availing themselves of the extensive water-communication. The Government of Pekin, if it is wise, will pursue the same course in its measures of repression. The steam gunboat and the electric telegraph, by their very appearance in the disturbed districts, will re-assure those who have almost ceased to believe in any government, and frighten away the evildoers; whilst the fall of Nankin will break the neck of a scourge which is on its last legs. The fleets of piratical junks which now infest the coasts of China, and whose depredations are known only to the natives, will, we hope, disappear before the vigorous operations of a steam flotilla under the Imperial flag. These “vikings” of the East occupy every creek between Canton and the borders of Cochin-China; they have quite cut up the native trade of the whole seaboard, and occasionally pirate even European traders. It is mainly owing to these gentry that we have been unable as yet to establish relations and open a customhouse at Kiung-Chow in the island of Hainan, a point which we hope one day to see the centre of an enormous trade. Lastly, we see every reason to expect most important results from the information the officers of the European-Chinese flotilla will be able to gather of the interior of the Chinese Empire, and of the commercial advantages likely to flow therefrom. As employés, though merely temporarily so, of the Emperor, they will have access to every part of that vast county, and excite no fears or jealousy; their opportunities will be immense, and we have reason to believe that they will bear well in mind the duty they owe to their fellow-men of gathering and storing well every crumb of information, geographical and otherwise. What they may effect for the benefit of our commerce, we may estimate from the fruits that have already followed in the wake of their brethren of the navy of England who first penetrated to Shanghai in 1842, and to Hankow in 1858. There are cities as rich as the former, rivers as large as the Yang-tsze, and lakes equal to those of Canada, to be re-discovered. Those almost unknown provinces of the interior are not wastes profitable only to the geographical enthusiast, but countries equal to states of Europe, thickly dotted with cities, and densely