Canton, July 20, 1858. — This mail brings to England Mr. Bruce, Lord Elgin's brother, with the Treaty signed by the Emperor on the 26th ultimo. The terms I cannot give you, as we have not yet seen them here, but there is no doubt they are very satisfactory. The Imperial Commissioners sent to treat with Lord Elgin at Tien-tsin were in such a fright at our having pushed on so near Pekin that they agreed to everything that we asked. It now remains to be seen how far this Treaty will affect us at Canton, and this we shall not know till Lord Elgin's instructions come down for us. Peace at Pekin by no means implies peace at Canton. The turbulent scoundrels of this Province are giving us all the annoyance they can, thinking thereby to drive us out of the city. The Mandarins have raised the whole country against us, and have in their pay a certain number of people they call " Braves," who are in reality nothing more than the lowest and most brutal of the population — thieves, murderers, and so on. The system they have adopted — for they dare not attack us openly, and disperse at the appearance of the smallest armed force — is to force all the inhabitants to quit the city and have no dealings with us whatever. All the better class have left, the shops are all closed except a few of the poorest kind, and the city is a perfect desert. Several hundreds of these Braves now lie concealed about the town, intimidating the people that remain, and trying, as they publicly proclaim, to cut us off by assassination. They lie in wait for solitary individuals, and if they succeed in murdering them, cut their heads off, for which the Mandarins pay them a high price. We have lost one man in this way, the French one, and the Indian regiments one sepoy and three camp followers. When these attempts are made we burn a large number of houses round the spot where they took place. The most successful attempt, however, that they have made was against a patrol of fourteen men who while marching along a narrow street, where not a Chinaman was visible, were suddenly fired upon by these ruffians concealed in the houses, and, out of fourteen, nine were struck down, one being killed and eight wounded. Not a soul was seen, the whole party running away immediately out of the backs of the houses. We immediately sent down an armed party and burnt the whole neighbourhood to a distance of three-quarters of a mile; but the real offenders escaped, as they always do. On another occasion a patrol moving along at night are injured by the explosion of a powder bag by some villains lying in wait, and two men are badly burnt. Thej'' further amuse themselves at night bj'' firing arrow rockets and jingalls at us from outside the walls. These never do us the slightest harm, and are fired with the double view of trying to burn us out and to harrow the men by keeping them on the alert; but as we never turn the men out of bed for these displays of fireworks, and as they never set anything on fire with them, they will probably in time get tired of the amusement. Whenever any hostile attempt is made against us from the city, it is now invariably followed by retribution, and we are now engaged in destroying two very large portions of the town, one covering a space equal to that of a moderate-sized town, and the other not very much smaller. We are all getting heartily sick of this work, and I sincerely trust we shall soon get away. Hwang, our new Viceroy, has not yet received the news of the Treaty being signed; when he has, perhaps there will be an end to this state of things, but it
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is doubtful. He has not yet made his appearance in Canton, and one cannot say when he will; his doing so will naturally put an end to all this, and I hope by next mail to be able to give you a hint as to the probable evacuation of Canton, to which I cannot as yet clearly see my way. I am afraid your letters to me are again going astray; three mails have now arrived without my getting a letter from Hampton Court, and two without my hearing from a living soul. Last week I received the Edinburgh Review all safe, and the mail before an Observer and Illustrated London News, all of which were most acceptable. I wanted to have had the latest Observer and Illustrated News by each mail, but only one Observer has reached me since I left England, and an Illustrated News I have not had for months with the exception of this one.... The climate is frightfully enervating, and it is really a great effort to do any work, particularly in the middle of the day. I long to get another letter from you... and trust this mail will be more gracious to me than its predecessors.