74 NOTES UPON THE GULF OF PECHELI, [Nov. 22, 1858. 



ferences, which have eventually led to the glorious treaty of Tientsin 

 being signed within its walls. 



Having sent the boats of the Furious into the Great Canal, to be 

 able to say that my ship's boats had been the first European ones 

 to reach the northern end of that remarkable work, a piece of 

 selfishness for which I hope to be pardoned, I returned in my galley 

 to meet the Coromandel, bearing the flag of the Commander-in-Chief, 

 who joined us an hour or two afterwards. 



Tientsin consists of a small walled city, built in the form of a 

 square, each face as nearly as possible a mile long, and each facing 

 to the four cardinal points of the compass. In the centre of each 

 of the time-worn walls a single gate opens out, giving only four 

 outlets, a pretty good proof that it is not a very large place, and 

 has not a very numerous population. It stands at the angle formed 

 between the south bank of the Great Canal and the river Peiho, 

 but its walls are from two to three hundred yards from the water's 

 edge. Suburbs of some extent lie to the north and west and east, 

 but on the plain facing the southern wall, few, if any, houses are 

 seen. These suburbs consist for the major part, as does the city, 

 of mud-built houses, giving the whole place an appearance of mean- 

 ness and poverty, little in keeping with the general reputation of 

 Tientsin for wealth and commercial importance. Previous travellers 

 have, they say, been always struck with the numbers and busy 

 character of its population ; we were disappointed in both respects, 

 but it is possible that the circumstances under which we visited it 

 may account for the seeming inactivity of the people ashore and 

 afloat. The population, such as we saw, never exceeded 100,000 

 souls, yet the residents vowed that there were half a million souls 

 in Tientsin. All the prodigious floating population had naturally 

 fled in their boats, and moreover it is quite possible that Tientsin, 

 like Nijni-Novgorod or other great marts of Eussia and Siberia, 

 becomes at times densely populated with merchants, boatmen, and 

 other frequenters of fairs, and often relapses into what we saw it, a 

 dull, dirty town with no large fixed population, and not exhibiting 

 (because it does not retain) any of the wealth which is constantly 

 passing through it. 



The streets within the city ran for the most part at right angles 

 to each other ; in the suburbs they were far more eccentric : all were 

 excessively ill-kept, and of all the strong-smelling places it has been 

 my hard fate to visit in this land of strong and foul smells, Tientsin 

 city and suburbs — streets, houses, and inhabitants — are the most 

 disagreeable. They seem to be aware of it, and feed largely upon 

 garlic to master the difficulty ; but to a visitor the odour is perfectly 



