all over the Empire; it would have been thought quite natural that the Emperor should have been reduced to accept the terms imposed upon him at Tientsin. But to do all this by means of a demonstration at Tientsin! The announcement was received with a yell of derision by connoisseurs and baffled speculators in tea. And indeed there was some ground for scepticism. It would have been very easy to manage matters here, so as to bring into question all the privileges which we had acquired by that Treaty. Even then we should have gained a great deal by it; because when we came to assert those rights by force, we should have had a good, instead of a bad _casus belli_. But I was desirous, if possible, to avoid the necessity for further recurrence to force; and it required some skill to do this. This has been my motive for protracting my stay. [Sidenote: The tariff signed.] _H.M.S. 'Furious.'--November 8th_.--I write a line to tell you that I got over the signature of my tariff, &c., very satisfactorily this morning, and set off in peace with all men, including Chinese Plenipotentiaries, and colleagues European and American, on my way up the Yangtze Kiang. We are penetrating into unknown regions, but I trust shortly to be able to report to you my return, and all the novelties I shall have seen. [Sidenote: Afloat on the Yangtze Kiang.] This morning at ten, I went to a temple which lies exactly between the foreign settlement and the Chinese town of Shanghae, to meet there the Imperial Commissioners, and to sign the tariff. We took with us the photographs which Jocelyn had done for them, and which we had framed. They were greatly delighted, and altogether my poor friends seemed in better spirits than I had before seen them in. We passed from photography to the electric telegraph, and I represented to them the great advantage which the Emperor would derive from it in so extensive an empire as China; how it would make him present in all the provinces, &c. They seemed to enter into the subject. The conference lasted rather more than an hour. After it, I returned to the consulate, taking a tender adieu of Gros By the way. I embarked at 1, and got under weigh at 2 P.M.... The tide was very strong against us, so we have not made much way, but we are really in the Yangtze river. We have moored between two flats with trees upon them; the mainland on the left, and an island (Bush Island), recently formed from the mud of the river, on the right. Though the earth has been uninteresting, it has not been so with the sky, for the dark shades of night, which have been gathering and thickening on the right have been confronted on the left by the brightest imaginable star, and the thinnest possible crescent moon, both resting on a couch of deep and gradually deepening crimson.