Our stoppage was short; after communicating with the navy store-keeper and the authorities ashore, receiving an official visit from the Portuguese captain of the port, and procuring a Chinese pilot, we lifted anchor, and stood over for the more flourishing English colonial town of Hong Kong. We reached this place after doubling through denuded steep islands, about seven o’clock in the evening. The ships of the East India squadron lying in the harbor, who having had some intimation of our proximity to the station by the mail-steamers from Ceylon, were on the _qui vive_ for our approach. The old Mississippi, with the broad pennant at her masthead, no sooner emerged from behind the western point of the island, than the “Saratoga” and “Plymouth” sloops-of-war hoisted their numbers and saluted. The storeship, “Supply,” we also found there. Our ship was soon filled by brother American officers from the other ships, come to salute and welcome old friends, and hoping that the mail-bags we had from the United States, had brought each one “good news from home.” The meetings were so joyous and so cordial that we did not remember that they were taking place on the other side of the globe. Officers from the English and French men-of-war also came aboard to pay their respects. The oriental salute seldom consists of more than three guns, and many of the natives of the East are unable to see why this number should be fired; they can not comprehend why you should burn in compliment the same material, which you would employ in sending deadly missiles at them, if in anger. But we, Christian nations, manage things differently; and the next day after our arrival told it: from the rising to the setting of the sun nearly, it was powder burning. Upon hoisting the colors at eight o’clock we saluted the town with twenty-one guns, and twenty-one were returned by a water-battery; the French saluted us and we saluted them; then came the admiral and commodorial salutes, English and French, which were returned in the old style by letting fall fore-top sails the while; and so that day the noise of one hundred and seventy-nine guns, broke and tumbled along the naked hills of Hong Kong, with nearly as splendid an effect as at St. Helena.