_January 8th_.--We had rather an important day's work yesterday. The Lieutenant-Governor showed some symptoms of a willingness to govern on our conditions. This gives some chance of our getting out of the difficulties of our situation. You may imagine what it is to undertake to govern some millions of people (the province contains upwards of 20,000,000), when we have _in all_ two or three people who understand the language! I never had so difficult a matter to arrange.... Each man has his own way of seeing things, and the real difficulties of the question being enormous, and the mysteries of the Chinese character almost unfathomable,... the problem is well nigh insoluble. However yesterday we seemed to make some progress towards an understanding. We walked up to the front along the wall as usual, and very hot it was; but we returned through the town itself with the General and Admiral and a large escort. I rode on a pony. It was a strange and sad sight. The wretched-looking single-storied houses on either side of the narrow streets almost all shut up, only a few people making their appearance, and these for the most part wan and haggard, and here and there places which the fire from our ships had destroyed, all presented a very melancholy spectacle; and one could hardly help asking one's self, with some disgust, whether it was worth while to make all the row which we have been making, for the sake of getting into this miserable place. However, I presume that the better part of the population have either fled or hid themselves. I daresay if they had returned, and the shops had been opened, the aspect of the town would have been different. [Sidenote: Establishment of a joint tribunal.] _January 9th._--Yesterday I went up again to the front without Gros, and pressed matters forward towards a solution. The result was, that my plan of getting the Governor of the province to consent to return to his Yamun and resume his functions, a board of our officers, supported by a large body of troops, being appointed to inhabit his Yamun with him, and to aid him in the maintenance of order, prevailed.... To-day we went, Gros and I, in great procession to the Governor's Yamun, to reinstate him in his office on the above conditions. We were carried in chairs through the town, attended by a large escort. The city seemed fuller of people than on the occasion of my former visit, and they looked more cheerful.