62 NOTES DURING THE PASSAGE OF H. M. S. ''FURIOUS" [Nov. 22,1858. 



printed instructions and articles of war — leads going, anchors clear, 

 masthead-man in his station, and the captain, master, and officer 

 of the watch on the paddle-boxes. With a little trouble we were 

 off in deep water again by 6*30 p.m., none the worse for our feat. 

 Had time and circumstances admitted of it, I should have waited 

 until next day to examine this danger ; it is either a prolongation 

 of the sand-spit of the Mia-tao Islands, or else a detached patch. I 

 am inclined to think the latter, as it is about three quarters of a 

 mile from the extreme laid down in the charts.* And subsequent 

 to this event, H.M.S. Sampson, towing up two gunboats, appears to 

 have scraped so close to it that the bight of the hawser, by which 

 she had a gunboat in tow, fouled it ; and the gunboat Leven, running 

 out of the gulf in the same spot, suddenly shoaled her water from 

 several fathoms to 13 feet, the spit from the island being at iho 

 time plainly visible. 



I have rather dwelt upon this subject to show how much neces- 

 sity there is here for an active nautical survey, and I think the 

 good people at home should dispense for awhile with home surveys, 

 which only bring to light such interesting little facts as that Dun- 

 garvan Harbour has shoaled 6 inches in 200 years ; and let the 

 great highroads of commerce or empire, fast opening in the East, 

 be rendered safe for the merchant-ship and man-of-war. This work 

 should not be confined to British surveyors — the Americans ought 

 to join us in making a complete survey of the seas and coast from 

 the entrance of the Yang-ze-kiang to the river Amiir. As j^et 

 they have left the whole onus and expense to England, and all the 

 many millions' worth of foreign property carried to and fro on the 

 coasts and in the rivers are indebted for safety to the admirable 

 charts of English officers. 



Aided by fine weather, during the first watch we felt our way 

 carefully through the Straits of Mia-tao, passed some hundreds of 

 large junks at anchor in the sheltered anchorage between the shoals 

 of Teng-chow-fu and the southern islands, and at 10*30 again put 

 the ship before the breeze and shaped a course for the bar of the 

 Peiho river, across the surface of the Gulf of Pecheli. 



Before we pass from the shores of the province of Shantung to 

 those of Chili we must dwell for a few minutes on the geography of 

 that division of the Chinese empire. Its area is just that of Eng- 

 land, Scotland, and Wales ! its population exceeds that of Great 



* Position of H. M. S. Furious when aground : — East extreme of Long Island 

 (Chang-shau) just open of the south extreme, and the west extreme of Ta-he-san 

 Island N.W. by W. 



