166 
HWA-YUEN-CHIN. 
seems to have been observed is told by Mr. Morrison, who, in one 
of his walks, fell in with a family of four generations, amounting to 
about twenty persons, in the same house. At the feet of the Patri- 
arch, who was only seventy years of age, stood his great grand- 
child, whilst at one end of the room his son was working at his 
father’s coffin. The old man, on being asked why he now prepared 
his coffin? answered, that he felt his health declining, and wished 
to have a resting-place prepared for him after death. When asked 
if the sight of the coffin did not excite mournful ideas, he replied, 
“ No.” A mandarin, who was by, remarked, “ His mouth says 
no, but it does not speak the language of his heart.” 
The Embassy left the village of Ta-tung on the morning of the 
seventh, and, continuing their route, arrived on the eleventh at the 
village of Hwa-yuen-chin, no otherwise remarkable than as being the 
scene of a fatal accident to one of the Embassy. William Millidge, 
one of the guard attached to Mr. Morrison’s boat, in passing along 
its gang-way, fell into the water, and, in spite of every exertion 
made to save him, was swept under the boat by the current and was 
drowned. The Legate halted the boats till his remains were interred, 
and a tomb-stone placed at the head of his grave with the follow- 
ing inscription in Chinese characters : — “ The Tomb of Millidge, 
one of the Body Guard of the British Ambassador, November 12th, 
1816.” 
The boats having quitted Hwa-yuen-chin immediately after the 
interment of the body, passed in the afternoon of the twelfth a 
conical rock, two hundred feet in height, called Seaou-koo-shan, 
or the little orphan hill, rising in the middle of the river. This 
rock is composed of pudding-stone, and resembles in most respects 
the Kin-shan. 
Early on the 13th, the Embassy reached the borders of the 
province of Kiang-si, and entered it on the following morning. 
By noon the next day, the Embassy quitted the Yang-tse-kiang, 
whose broad expanse was seen far away to the westward, and 
entered the Po-yang lake. 
