412 Voyage of the Novara. 



prevent all further navigation. Up to this point the mighty 

 river, like the Mississippi, the Rhine, or the Danube, may be 

 navigated by river steamers, without the slightest danger or 

 difficulty. What an enormous trade, what a tremendous de- 

 velopment, will ere long be witnessed here, so soon as, in 

 accordance with the stipulations of the Tien-Tsin and Pekin 

 treaties, English ships, freighted with goods and necessaries 

 of all sorts, shall steam up this most splendid of rivers and 

 its tributaries, and the inhabitants of the far interior shall 

 become acquainted with the products of European industry, 

 and in exchange shall export to Europe innumerable articles 

 of new and valuable trade. For it is the greatest service of 

 the merchant that he not alone opens new channels of com- 

 merce, and by increased exportation of the fabrics of his 

 native land tends to build up his power, but that he civilizes 

 foreign nations, and enriches science and industry with in- 

 numerable fresh acquisitions. 



The larger ships usually lie at anchor at the little Chinese 

 village of Wusung on the river of that name, just where it 

 falls into the Yang-tse-Kiang, and here accordingly, owing to 

 the hostilities, we found upwards of twenty ships of war of 

 various nationalities at anchor. Among others the powerful 

 American steam ship Minnesota^ and the French frigates Auda- 

 cieuse and Nemesis, an imposing spectacle in these distant re- 

 gions, and to which the half-ruined Chinese fort on the tongue 

 of land between the Wusung and the Yang-tse-Kiang, with its 

 couple of wretched cannon, presented a tragi-comic contrast. 



