APPROACH TO CANTON. 
205 
its resources; and it contained the only foreigners that had ever been 
seen in many of the provinces which it traversed. The influence 
of the government, therefore, no less than the curiosity of the people, 
contributed to depopulate the country in the vicinity of its route, 
and to concentrate the inhabitants in the cities by which it might 
pass : Lord Amherst’s Embassy was in nearly the same circum- 
stances. The Dutch Embassy, on the contrary, little respected by the 
government, and following immediately after Lord Macartney’s im- 
posing mission, would modify in a much less degree the ordinary 
appearance of population, and consequently be in circumstances more 
favourable to a correct estimate of its amount. 
I apprehend, however, that any person travelling through a country 
in a hurried journey, under a suspicious surveillance, must always be 
unqualified to pronounce on a question that respects a whole nation ; 
and I shall, therefore, make no further remark on this subject, than 
that the visible population of China did not appear “ more than 
commensurate with the quality of land under actual cultivation.”* 
In proportion as we approached Canton, the river widened and 
deepened, and the country opened and became more flat on both sides. 
Groves of orange trees, of bananas, and of the rose apple, frequently 
relieved extensive rice fields. The scene had, however, a dreary 
sameness, which would have been a little irksome to our feelings, had 
we been further from the termination of our journey ; but our near 
approach to the society of our countrymen, to a re-union with our 
shipmates, and, above all, to intelligence of our friends in England, 
gave us prospects too interesting to be relinquished for the sober- 
ness of reality. 
On the morning of the 1st of January, the trampling and yells of 
our boatmen getting under weigh at an early hour, which had so 
often disturbed our rest, and driven us from our beds execrating every 
thing Chinese, now sounded to us like grateful music, and seemed in 
unison with the throbbings of elated hope. W e arose, and gliding 
* Ellis’s Embassy, vol. ii. p. 20J. 
