Still sailing among islands, mountainous and barren, we soon reach the Bocca Tigris, or mouth of the Canton river, guarded now with very formidable forts. The Chinese, since their war with England, have been profiting by sore experience. If their gunnery be as completely mended as their fortifications, another war with them would not be quite so much like an attack of grown men upon children. The poor Chinese, in that war, were indefatigable in the endeavor to keep up appearances. Steam ships were scarcely worth attention--they had "plenty all the same inside:" and when the first encounter, near the spot on which we are now sailing, between junks and men-of-war, had exhibited the tragedy, in flesh and bone, of John Bull in a China-shop, the Chinese Symonds, at Ningpo, was ordered to build ships exactly like the British. He could not execute the order, and played, therefore, executioner upon himself. Cannon were next ordered, that should be large enough to destroy a ship at one burst. They were made, and the first monster tried, immediately burst and killed its three attendants; nobody could be induced to fire the others. One morning, a British fleet was very much surprised to see the shore look formidable with a line of cannon mouths. The telescope, which had formed no part of the Chinese calculations, discovered them to be a row of earthern pots. Forts, in the same way, often turned out to be dummies made of matting, with the portholes painted; and sometimes real cannon, mere three pounders, had their fronts turned to the sea, plugged with blocks of wood, cut and so painted as to resemble the mouths of thirty-two pounders shotted. However, we have passed real strong forts and veritable heavy cannon, to get through the Bocca Tigris. Nothing is barren now; the river widens, and looks like an inland sea; the flat land near the shores is richly cultivated; rice is there and upon the islands, all protected with embankments to admit or exclude the flood in its due season, or provided with wheels for raising water where the land is too high to be flooded in a simpler manner. The embankments, too, yield plantain crops. The water on each side is gay with water lilies, which are cultivated for their roots. Banyan and fig-trees, cypress, orange, water-pines, and weeping willows, grow beside the stream, with other trees; but China is not to be called a richly timbered country; most of its districts are deficient in large trees. There is the Whampoa Pagoda; there are more pagodas, towers, joss-houses; here are the European factories, and here are boats, boats, boats, literally, hundreds of thousands of boats--the sea-going junk, gorgeous with griffins, and with proverbs, and with painted eyes; the flower boat; boats of all shapes, and sizes, down to the barber's boat, which barely holds the barber and his razor. There is a city on the water, and the dwellers in these boats, who whether men or women, dive and swim so naturally that they may all be fishes,