We were now out of the suburbs, having on our left a valley shaded with the bamboo and banyan, and containing granite vat-shaped wells, from which the water was being continually carried within the walls. We ascended a high hill on which a number of goats were browsing, and seated ourselves on the steps of a fort. This place was captured by the English after much difficulty, being compelled to drag their guns a long distance from the river, over rice-fields; and here it was that, after getting possession, they got the mortifying intelligence that the commodore had granted a truce. The inscription on the gateway told how it had been placed there to guard the city, and to watch those who came to plunder. From here you could see over the walls, and look down upon the city within, the houses of which did not appear more numerous than outside; and we could discern the consular-flags at the hongs, that we had left some hours before, in the extreme distance to the east. It is almost to be regretted that the English should have consented to treat with the enemy, and given up this fort, when they had the whole city at their feet, and could have given these treacherous, malignant, cruel, dictatorial, self-conceited, vain people, a lesson in enlightenment, which would have lasted them a long time, and procured a little more deference for the “rest of mankind.” Descending from here we had a sight of an old mosque, and also of a dead-house, where the Chinese frequently allow their deceased relatives to remain for six months at a time, until their bonzes shall designate some _lucky_ spot in which, in their trunk-of-tree-looking coffin, they may be buried. In a hill-side cemetery we saw persons worshipping at the tombs of their relatives, and burning joss-paper; also noticed a Chinese funeral, the mourners in white. We returned by the western suburbs, and after stopping a while to take a look at the oil-mongers’ hall—each calling in Canton having a similar building—a kind of ’change, we elbowed our way to the hongs which we reached about three o’clock, having left them at ten in the morning, during the whole of which time, Mr. Bonney, while very polite in his attentions and explanations to us, like one properly imbued with the spirit of his mission, as he is, distributed his “Yesoo” or Christian tracts to those whom he would first ascertain, could read them in Chinese, being nearly the only medium by which it may be hoped to introduce Christianity into that country.