We were encompassed by tanka-boats—so named from their resemblance in shape to an egg—a great number of which they could scarcely contain. Their maiden proprietors, with their pretty teeth, big nankeen breeches, nicely-plaited hair, small bare feet and braceleted wrists, at once set up the cry, “Takee my boatee!—takee my boatee!” Some one having taken the cockle-shell barge of Atti, and some other that of Aqui, a few moves of the powerful skull of the Celestial Charon at the stern, as her small feet step back and forth on a neatly-scoured miniature platform, and a few pulls at the sweep-oar of the Celestial Charon in the bow, and the boat now is in the sand of the beach. One of the maidens, with none of the aversion of the feline species, steps over into the water, arranges a small cricket-bridge, and balance-pole of bamboo, and with the right hand of fellowship helps you up on the nice stone jutty. Up, you walk to Franck’s hotel, on the wide and level praya, leading to the circular promenade on which the Rip Van Winkle population, when the hot sun is nearly down, go to take their ante-supper walk and evening airing. On the 18th of April we left the anchorage of the old Portuguese city, and started for our first visit to the anchorage of Canton for ships drawing twenty feet of water. We stood across the wide and turbid estuary of the Pekiang, and about twelve o’clock we reached the Bocca Tigris—the proper mouth of the Canton river—and passed the forts of the Bogue, that the English ships Andromache, Imogen, and others, handled so badly as they held on their way up to their great city. We were detained some time before reaching here, by having towed under an itinerant fast-boat who had made fast astern. It took some time to right his boat, bail her, and take off the crew who huddled on her keel. The fellow was attempting to smuggle salt which made his boat too deep. He afterward fell into the hands of some of the river pirates who infest the waters of China. We ran through fish-stakes innumerable, passed pagodas—those lofty, circular, terraced piles of brick and porcelain, which some of the Chinamen tell you were built to mark the commencement of learning and civilization with them, and others that they keep off evil spirits from the country visible from their tops—and at three o’clock were moored in Whampoa Reach, surrounded by merchant-ships of all nations; from the mountainous old East Indiaman, to the (cynosure of all) magnificent American clippers. ’Tis here, of all the world, in a limited space, that the alpha and omega of naval architecture are to be seen—the “Flying Cloud,” the “Sea Serpent,” and the Chinese salt-junk.