“To-day I have passed two delivery letters on you, each for three (3) chests of Malwa opium, both in favor of the Chinaman Ehing, wherefore you will take no suspicion about the delivery. Both these letters are drawn by me for six chests of Malwa. “I will also thank you to pass one of the two chests, Nos. 1 and 2; pass one of them among the six.” Another ran: “We have before us your note of the 3d, relating to order No. 852, for one chest Malwa, and note that you had retained the order, the holder declining to take the opium. “Having now, however, agreed to take the drug under the same order, you will please deliver it accordingly, but without reduction, as he must take it, having already paid the money. We leave it to your judgment, however, to allow a small reduction, should he insist upon it.” These ships are well armed and numerously manned, mostly with Lascars. The living on them is very sumptuous. Some years ago Cum-sing-moon was visited by a terrible typhoon, when these hulks broke from their moorings; some were driven entirely out of the harbor, others came in contact, stove and sunk. The United States sloop-of-war Plymouth was lying there at the time, and got considerable salvage for property saved. The river-pirates make this place their rendezvous during the night. They would seize and rob boats just off the mouth of the harbor: their boats are fast sailers. The fast-boat of our compradore, when bringing us provisions from Macao, had to run a daily gauntlet of the rascals. But a young Portuguese officer, in command of a small armed lorcha, used to pursue them with much success. One night, about nine o’clock, having got intelligence of their whereabouts, while we lay at Cum-sing-moon, he ran quietly into the harbor, and putting his men in Sampan-boats, he fell into a nest of them and peppered the rascals right and left. Their crafts are then taken to Macao and sold, furnishing a kind of prize-money. The long and fast-sailing mandarin-boats, that smuggle the opium, usually get here in the evening. The captains of the hulks make them anchor some distance from their ships, because of their carelessness in the use of powder; some of them would quietly sit over an open tank of it and smoke their pipes, believing that if they are blown up it is a fatality which they can not prevent. These boats are armed, and well manned, and when there is no wind to expand their large sails, they pull as many as a hundred sweep-oars moving through the water like great centipedes. After their large crews have had their paddy chow-chow, in the most clamorous and discordant manner, they proceed to chin-chin joss, as the sun goes down, by banging on gongs and tom-toms; but before midnight they have paid down their pile of specie, gotten their chests of the drug aboard, and are moving off up the river to Canton.