April 8.—Early in the morning we reached the outskirts of the great city of Ch'ung-Ch'ing; and passing through a crowd of junks of all sizes, we hauled up to a position under the walls, where we very soon received a welcome batch of letters and papers from the agents of Messrs. Major and Smith. The Chinese merchants have an excellent postal system of their own: they arrange amongst themselves to send couriers or runners on foot at regular intervals, who travel very fast, and generally very securely. In this case the letters had been only fourteen days from Hankow, about six hundred miles by road. During the whole time I was in China I received every letter and newspaper sent me, except one letter, and that had been forwarded viâ Russia!

Soon afterwards Monsieur Provôt, one of the French missionaries, came to pay us a visit: a tall pleasant man, dressed in Chinese clothes, and with an artificial plait, for the missionaries in China invariably discard foreign clothes. He said that all sorts of conjectures had been rife about us amongst the Chinese. He asked Baber when he was going on to Yün-Nan; and turning to me said he hoped that I should like living here. When he saw that we did not exactly understand the remark, he explained that it was the general opinion that Baber had been appointed a consul in Yün-Nan, and that I was to be consul at Ch'ung-Ch'ing.