_Hong-Kong.--February 23rd._--I have good news from the North. As I was walking on the deck this morning at 8 A.M., Mr. Lay suddenly made his appearance. He had come by the mail-packet from Shanghae, with a letter from the Imperial Commissioners, announcing that the seal of Imperial Commission had been taken from Hwang, the Governor-General of this province, and given to Ho, the Governor-General of the provinces in which Shanghae is situated. Lay further states that his friend the Tautai informed him that they are prepared to receive the new Ambassador peacefully at Pekin, when he goes to exchange ratifications. If so, I think that I shall be able to return with the conviction that the objects of my mission have been accomplished. The details of his Treaty having been now definitively arranged, Canton pacified, and its neighbourhood overawed by the peaceful progress through it of a military expedition, there remained nothing to detain him in the East.[6] [Sidenote: Homeward bound.] [Sidenote: Hong-Kong factory.] _Canton River.--March 3rd._--I am really and truly off on my way to England, though I can hardly believe that it is so. The last mail brought me not a word either from Frederick or about his plans; only, what was very satisfactory, the approval of the Government of my arrangement respecting the residence of the British Minister in China. I have, however, determined to start, and to take my chance of meeting him somewhere _en route_. Unless I were to go back to Shanghae, I could not do much more here now; and if I put off, I shall have the monsoon against me, and great heat in the Red Sea. Having resolved on this course, I invited the Hong-Kong merchants to come up with me to Canton, to look at the several factory sites. In their usual way they have been dictating the choice of a site to me, abusing me for not fixing upon it; and I found out that very few of them had even taken the trouble of looking at the ground. In short I found that, in my short visits, I had seen a great deal more of the sites than they had done, who live constantly on the spot, and are personally interested in the matter. I started from Hong-Kong yesterday morning, and to-day I went over the ground with them. The rain poured, and I got a good wetting.... As I was starting from the town in a gunboat to rejoin my ship, I met the military and naval expedition, which has been absent for more than two weeks, returning. I had not time to communicate with the officers, but they seemed in good spirits. It is a curious wind-up of this most eventful mission, that as I am starting from China, I should meet an Anglo-French force returning from a pacific invasion into the very heart of the province of Kwan-tung!--the _pépinière_ of the Canton Braves, of whom we have heard so much.