it lay for a fortnight while the bar was being surveyed and buoyed. The Chinese had constructed a great line of defensive works about Woosung, but the British fleet anchored in face of the batteries on the 16th of June, and as the result of a two hours' bombardment the Chinese fire was crushed and the garrisons were driven from their batteries by the sailors and troops. Shanghai was occupied, and the expedition remained in the vicinity of Woosung while surveying steamers were prospecting the river. It was during this halt that the _Belleisle_ with the Ninety-Eighth aboard joined the expeditionary force at Woosung on the 21st of June. The regiment was assigned to the first brigade under Lord Saltoun, and occupied part of the third division of vessels during the ascent of the river. The expedition left Woosung on July 6th, its objectives being the great cities of Chin-Kiang and Nanking. The strength of it was overwhelming, for the fleet consisted of fifteen ships of war, ten steamers and fifty transports and troop-ships, on which were embarked nine thousand soldiers and three thousand disciplined seamen ready for service on shore in case of need. The _Belleisle_ was off Chin-Kiang on the 19th, and on the morning of the 21st the troops disembarked in three brigades. The columns of Sir Hugh Gough and General Schoedde had some hard fighting with the Tartar garrison of the city commanded by the gallant Haeling. Lord Saltoun's brigade, with the Ninety-Eighth in advance, marched against a Chinese force occupying a low ridge some miles inland and to westward of the city. The opposition encountered was trivial, and was easily overcome by the light company of the Ninety-Eighth in skirmishing order supported by a few discharges from a mountain-battery. But the regiment, debilitated as it was by a long tropical voyage in an overcrowded ship, unsupplied with an equipment suitable for the climate and wearing its ordinary European clothing, was in no case to resist the fierce summer-heat of China. The sun had its will of the men, thirteen of whom died on the ground; and Colin Campbell, seasoned veteran as he was, was himself struck down, though he soon recovered. From this day forth for months, and even for years, disease maintained its fell grip on the victims of overcrowding, and Napier would have been puzzled to recognise in the shattered invalids of Hong-Kong the "beautiful regiment" which had sailed from Plymouth in fine physique and high heart. On the night following the disembarkation several cases of cholera occurred, and fever and dysentery became immediately prevalent. Within ten days from the landing at Chin-Kiang fifty-three men of the Ninety-Eighth had died, and the _Belleisle_ was rapidly becoming a floating hospital.