94 
CHINESE CARTS. 
President had been too often drilled into the habits of passive obe- 
dience, to support his colleague otherwise than by silent acquiescence. 
The morning following the impudent visit of their envoys, His 
Excellency, accompanied by the other Commissioners and his suite, 
visited them both at a small public building in the middle of the 
city of Tung-Chow, at the distance of rather more than a mile from 
his residence. The Commissioners went in sedan-chairs ; the suite 
in carts. The sedans were not uncomfortable conveyances ; but the 
carts fully merited the character given of them by different European 
writers, who have experienced the effects of their motion ; being in 
fact; the most execrable machines imaginable. They were made of 
very strong materials, firmly fastened together. The wheels, fre- 
quently without spokes, were low, and fixed to very short axletrees. 
The bodies, covered with tilts of matting, open only in front, were 
just wide enough to admit two persons wedged close together ; had 
no raised seats, and were in contact with the axles. Such a construc- 
tion, in no way lessening the force of the shocks to which they are 
perpetually liable from the nature of Chinese roads, although of little 
consequence to the Chinese, who through habit readily accommo- 
date themselves to their motion, was to us a serious evil. The only 
method used to render these vehicles at all tolerable, is in moving 
the wheels so far back as to throw the weight between them and the 
horse ; but of this contrivance we had no opportunity of expe- 
riencing the comfort. Yet, however inconvenient, they were well 
defended from the weather by coverings of mats ; and a screen, 
extending from the top, defended the mules which drew them. 
The road through which we passed, on our way to the place of 
audience, was cut into deep and unequal ruts, filled with fluid mud, 
which threw off, when agitated by the passage of the carts, an offen- 
sive exhalation nearly equalling that of the fish-market of St. Sebas- 
tian. We were obliged to bear it, being unable to cover our nostrils 
with our hands, which were employed in supporting us against the 
concussions that our machines every instant received. We were indeed 
