196 
CHAOU'CHOU-FOO. 
tulate, I returned to the linguist, not a little incensed at the trick 
he had played me. He received my complaint very coolly, and 
frankly replied that it had been necessary to get rid of me, as I 
gave him “ too much a trump,” the Canton-English for too much 
trouble. 
At Chaou-chou-foo the uncomfortable matted boats were changed 
for others which were large, commodious, and handsome. We en- 
tered them in high spirits on the morning of the 27th, hoping in a 
few days to be clear of a people whose character rarely presented 
itself in any amiable light. 
Having passed, during the first day, through a country exhibiting 
no characters worth noting, the Embassy halted on the morning of the 
28th before a temple built in the fissure of a rock, and which is repre- 
sented, as it appeared when close to us, in the annexed engraving. 
With our imaginations warmed by its beautiful and romantic de- 
scription* by an elegant writer, we were surprised at landing on a 
* Those of my readers who have not before read the following description, will thank 
me for its insertion, although it occupies a long note. 
“ Before we had proceeded many hundred yards we were attracted to the left by an 
arm of the river, which, after stretching considerably from the main stream, had bent and 
elbowed itself into a deep cove or basin, above which enormous masses of rock rose 
abruptly on every side, agglomerating to a stupendous height, and menacing collision. 
The included flood was motionless, silent, sullen, black. The ledge where we landed was 
so narrow, that we could not stand upon it without difficulty; we were hemmed round 
with danger. The mountains frowned on us from on high; the precipices startled us 
from beneath. Our own safety seemed even in the jaws of a cavern that yawned in our 
front. We plunged into it without hesitating, and, for a moment, felt the joys of a sudden 
escape: but our terrors returned when we surveyed our asylum. We found ourselves at 
the bottom of a staircase hewn in the rock, long, narrow, steep, and rugged. At a dis- 
tance a feeble taper glimmered from above, and faintly discovered to us the secrets of the 
vault. We, however, looked forward to it as our pole star; we scrambled up the steps, 
and with much trouble and fatigue arrived at the landing-place. Here an ancient bald- 
headed Bonze issued from his den, and offered himself as our conductor through this sub- 
terranean labyrinth. The first place he led us to was the grand hall or refectory of the 
convent. It is an excavation forming nearly a cube of twenty-five feet, through one face 
of which is a considerable opening that looks over the water, and is barricadoed with a rail. 
This apartment is well furnished in the taste of the country with tables and chairs highly 
varnished, and with many gauze and paper lanthorns of various colours, in the middle of 
