But the most remarkable improvement of all, and which shewed the rapid stride towards a great change which they were daily making, as well as the ingenuity of the Chinese character, was the construction of several large _wheeled_ vessels, which were afterwards brought forward against us with great confidence, at the engagement at Woosung, the last naval affair of the war, and were each commanded by a mandarin of rank, shewing the importance they attached to their new vessels. This, too, was so far north as the Yangtze Keang, where we had never traded with them; so that the idea must have been suggested to them by the reports they received concerning the wonderful power of our steamers or wheeled vessels. To anticipate a little, it may here be mentioned, that the vessels had wooden wheels, very like an undershot mill-wheel, which were moved by machinery inside the vessel, worked by a sort of capstan by manual labour, the crew walking it round and round, just like walking up an anchor on board a man-of-war; the horizontal revolution was turned into the upright one by strong wooden _cog-wheels_, upon regular mechanical principles. When once the spirit of change and improvement has taken hold of the Chinese, it is impossible to say where it will stop among so ingenious and indefatigable a people. Even the emperor himself has ordered still greater changes to be made since the peace, and has directed that "the best materials for building ships shall be procured from all parts of the world; and that, as only ships built on European principles can contend with European ships, they must gradually learn to adopt European models themselves. But, as this can only be effected by time, and the ships are required now to suppress the pirates which infest his coast, they are at once to purchase foreign ships and learn to exercise their crews." To return from this short digression, we may now ask what sort of a report was made by Admiral Kwan to his mighty master, upon the subject of these first actions below the Bogue--the first great collision between the power and science of the west and the self-confidence of the remote east. Keshen, clear-sighted as he certainly was, could not fail to perceive the many troubles and humiliations to which his country must become subjected if hostilities were pushed to extremes. He was fully alive to the serious defeat he had sustained, yet dreaded to break the truth too suddenly to his haughty master; wise, therefore, in his generation, he declared there had been a "drawn battle." He informed his master that the contest had been maintained from eight A.M. until two P.M., and that "then, the _tide ebbing_, the foreign vessels ceased firing, and anchored in the middle of the stream, _each side maintaining its ground_."