This pompatic paragraph appears rather a _non sequitur_; unless it can be shown _when_ an exhibition of great pomp is consistent with the spirit of our institutions. The _entente cordiale_ being established with the “kingdom of Loo-Choo,” presents of agricultural implements and a hand cotton-gin, were made to the authorities, who returned air-plants and birds. A stone from the island was also procured for the Washington monument. The commodore having entertained the regent and the authorities on board the flag-ship Mississippi with a supper and Ethiopian performance, the Lexington sailed for Hong Kong on the 15th, and two days after—the anniversary of our first departure from Japan—we bid good-by to the Loo-Chooans, as much, no doubt, to their delight as our own. In getting off the Amakarimas, the Powhatan parted company with us, bound for Amoy and Ningpo, and in four days we had a Chinese pilot on board, and the next dropped anchor in the harbor of Hong Kong, China, from whose mail facilities we had been absent over half a year. CHAPTER XV. Letters: considering the rapid occurrence of events of moment now-a-days, and the lightning transmission of intelligence, it was with joy we got letters on our arrival at Hong Kong, having been for over half a year, so far as news was concerned, inhumed in a remote country. The official news was, that we were ordered home by way of California and South America, at which all were overjoyed; and the commodore was granted permission to return to the United States _via_ Europe, at government expense. Many a poor fellow got letters that had been waiting for him in Hong Kong a long time, and at the same time letters from others of later date, that told that the writers of the former ones could never write again. We found in the harbor the ships of the surveying squadron under Commodore Ringgold, among which was the since ill-fated Porpoise. There had been no improvement in the intestine troubles. An American captain had been murdered by the Chinese; and the dearly-beloved occupants of the hongs of Canton, feeling insecure in the possession of their “filthy lucre”—for if the “chop dollar” of China is not filthy lucre, I know not what it is—the Mississippi proceeded to her old anchorage at Whampoa, and sent men and howitzers, as before, up to the city. The captain of the American ship Amity, having been murdered by two of his foreign crew, the next morning after our arrival through the intervention of “Judge Lynch,” their bodies were seen suspended from either yard-arm of their vessel.