ClIAP. I. 
KEA-HING-FOO. 
9 
intersected with rivers and canals, so that the traveller 
can visit by boat almost all the towns and cities in this 
part of the province. Some of the canals lead to the 
large cities of Sung-kiang-foo, Soo-chow-foo, Nanking, 
and onward by the Grand Canal to the capital itself. 
Others, again, running to the west and south-west, form 
the highways to the Tartar city of Chapoo, Hang-chow- 
foo, and to numerous other cities and towns, which are 
studded over this large and important plain. 
We proceeded in a south-westerly direction — my des- 
tination being the city of Hang-chow-foo. Having a 
fair wind during the first day, we got as far as the Maou 
lake, a distance of 120 or 130 le * from Shanghae. 
Here we stopped for the night, making our boat fast to 
a post driven into the grassy banks of the lake. Starting 
early next morning, we reached in the forenoon a town 
of considerable size, named Kea-hing-yuen, and a little 
farther on we came to the city of Kea-hing-foo, a large 
place walled and fortified. 
This city seems nearly as large as Shanghae, and 
probably contains about the same number of inhabitants 
— 270,000. Its walls and ramparts had been in a most 
dilapidated and ruinous condition, but the people got 
such a fright when the English took Chapoo — which is 
not a very great distance off — that they came forward 
with funds, and had the defe'iices of their city substan- 
tially repaired. Such was the boatmen's story when 
accounting for the excellent order in which the fortifica- 
* Ale has generally been set down as the third part of an English 
mile, but if we suppose a fourth, or even a fifth, we shall be nearer 
the truth. 
B 3 
