108 i CHINA. 



mercial intercourse with this country are at present regulated and 

 confined. 



The embassy arrived in the river Peho, in the gulf of Peking, the 

 beginning of August 1793; and, on the 2 1st of the same month, reach- 

 ed the city of Peking. They remained here till the beginning of 

 September ; when they were conducted to Zhehol, or Jehol, one of 

 the emperor's country residences in Tartary, distant about forty or 

 fifty leagues from Peking. Here they had their audience of the 

 emperor, who accepted the presents they had brought in the most 

 gracious manner, and returned others of great value, of which iwo 

 were so singular as to claim particular notice : the one was a poem 

 addressed to his Britannic majesty, the composition of the emperor 

 himself, and in his own hand-writing ; it was lodged in a black 

 wooden carved box, of no great value, but as an antique, to which 

 character it has a just claim, having been two thousand years in the 

 possession of the imperial family of China. The other present was 

 a mass of costly agate, of unequalled size and beauty. It had always 

 been the practice with the emperor to hold this agate in his hand, 

 and to fix his eyes upon it, whenever he spoke to a mandarin or any 

 of his ministers ; as to look upon a subject is considered as not only 

 derogatory to the imperial dignity, but to confer too much honour on 

 the individual addressed. 



Kien-Long, the late emperor of China, appeared, at the time he 

 gave audience to the embassy, to be perfectly unreserved, cheerful} 

 and unaffected ; his eyes were full and clear, and his countenance 

 open. He was clad in plain dark silk, with a velvet bonnet, in form 

 not much different from the bonnet of Scotch Highlanders ; on the 

 front of it was placed a large pearl, which was the only jewel or orna- 

 ment he appeared to have about him. 



Kien-Long, or, as sir George Staunton writes his name, Chen- 

 Lung, was only the fourth sovereign of the Tartar dynasty which 

 took possession of the throne of that country about the year 1664. 

 He ascended the throne of China in 1736, and died February 11, 

 1799. He was succeeded by Ka-Hing, the present emperor; who 

 immediately on his accession to the throne degraded and imprisoned 

 Ho-choong-taung, the prime minister of his predecessor. This minis- 

 ter was in power at the time of lord Macartney's embassy, and was 

 supposed to be very hostile to the object of it : his disgrace has given 

 hopes that such another attempt might now prove successful, 



