addition, receive one mace of silver (about fourteen cents) as his daily pay: each committee is also requested to provide cooking utensils.” A well-contrived attack upon the Brave position at Shek-tsing resulted in the utter discomfiture of the nondescript army, collected in obedience to the foregoing mandate, the casualties on our side amounting only to four wounded. The house of the notorious Leang-paou-heun was gutted and burned, to the great satisfaction of the country people, whom he had been squeezing for some months past, at the rate of twelve catties of grain per mow, which was, in fact, a tax of from twelve to twenty per cent. No wonder they exclaimed, as they clustered joyfully round the smouldering embers, and waited till they should cool sufficiently for purposes of closer investigation: “Oh! Amidha Buddha! blessed be Heaven for having willed its destruction, and the barbarians for having effected it.” Pihquei afterwards accused Leang of having appropriated the pay of one thousand Braves who had never been enrolled. The affair of Shek-tsing was productive of so salutary an effect upon both the peasantry and the Braves, that it was deemed desirable to confirm the impression by military promenades in the neighbourhood of Canton, whereby we should give indisputable evidence of our power—hitherto always denied by the Chinese—to operate by land as well as by water. The three chief Commissioners were still holding court in fancied security in the mountain village of Fayune; and although their efforts to re-enlist Braves were by no means so successful as formerly, still it was thought expedient to run these gentry to earth, if possible, and thus extinguish the vital principle of an organization which had been a source of considerable annoyance to us during our occupancy of Canton.