Canton, February 26, 1858. — The mail has just come in, bringing me letters up to the 6th December. I cannot tell you how much pleasure it has given me, for it has brought me a budget of letters such as I have not received since my arrival in China; and I have more to expect, for Captain Lambert of the Engineers, who landed here this evening, tells me that he has a packet of books for me in his portmanteau which I shall get to-morrow. This is the first really satisfactory mail I have had, and I assure you my disappointments have been numerous. I have only missed one mail writing myself to one or other of the family since landing in Hong Kong in August, my scribbling powers will not admit of more, but I am now most amply repaid for my patience. Your different letters to Calcutta have, I think, all reached me, and I have so many to answer that I hope for the present this may be considered a general reply. — ^There is now no chance of the army going north, or indeed of the force here being employed otherwise than as the garrison of Canton, and as I am now first to be mounted in my regiment, I have written to MoncriefF to beg he will get me ordered to rejoin my regiment, so I am in hopes that the beginning of the autumn will see us together again. I wish you would let William see this, and ask Moncrieff to do his best towards furthering my wishes; he knows him quite well enough to press upon him the request. I have already written to him about it — to have me ordered home upon the plea of my being first to be mounted.... I have been so hard worked for the last three months, and have had so much. to annoy me in one way or another, that I really have neither time nor spirits for writing amusing letters. You will perceive by this last sentence that I am rather bilious,
but I hope the next mail will bring you a letter more worth reading than this, and that I shall be in a better humour for writing than I am now....
Canton, Mar^A 15, 1858. — My last letter — Feb. 26th — has, I suppose, reached you. I almost wish it had not, for I was so out of sorts when I wrote it that I am afraid it did not give you the pleasure which I should like my letters always to do,... I must now give you an account of a picnic party which some of us made the other day into the country, and which has been attended by results more important than we ever anticipated from our quiet little day's amusement. We left the city about a fortnight ago, about nine of us, accompanied by our servants armed, to visit a range of hills called the White Cloud Mountains, which had long attracted our curiosity. The country we passed through was curious enough; it was divided between burial-grounds and cultivated fields, and very little ground is left unemployed in one or other of these ways; hilly ground being used for the former, the plains for the latter. The cultivation is beautifully carried on, and an amount of science, neatness, and care is shown which astonishes you. The paddy (rice) fields were not then under water, the first crop not being then planted, but when it is, the country will be one mass of water, for the rice when once in the ground is subject to an unceasing system of irrigation till harvest-time. There are no roads in China, the only system of communication, except by water, being long narrow bridle-paths which hardly admit of two people walking abreast. They are generally paved with slabs of granite to prevent them from wearing away. There are no hedges or ditches separating the fields, but merely low ridges, so that when you look upon a plain from any height you see one continuous mass of cultivation of the most perfect kind unbroken by tree or road. Along these narrow paths we had to walk in single file the whole way. At last we came within sight of a village, and no sooner had the people seen us than
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