CIIAPTEE IX. 
WE ARRIVE AT SHANGIIAE, WHEKCE WE SAIL WITH THE COMMISSIONERS 
FOR THE PI-HO — WE PASS OVER THE YELLOW SEA IN FINE STYLE, 
ANCHOR IN SIGHT OF THE MOUTH OF THE Pl-HO, AND SEND IN THE 
SMALLER VESSELS WE FAIL TO “REACH PEKIN BY WATER,” AND 
RETURN IN DISGUST TO SHANGHAE, WHERE THE OLD JOHN’S ENGINE 
“ RUNS DOWN.” 
Upok our aiTival at Shangliae, we found the “ Pekin 
party” awaiting our ari’ival with the most intense 
anxiety. Mr. McLean, in particular, having heard a 
most doleful account of the inefficiency of our “screw- 
steamer-of-war of the third class,” began to give us up, 
and had made up his mind to sail the next day should 
we not arrive. The consequence was that we had to 
work day and night coaling ship, and, when that was 
accomplished, the Powhatan took both the schooner 
and ourselves in tow, and walked off with us at the rate 
of eleven miles an hour. The Rattler followed with 
the hired lorcha, and thus we boomed it over the smooth 
and polished surface of the Yellow Sea and the Gulf of 
Pichili, until one moonlight night we found ourselves 
anchoring in six fathoms of water and no land in sight. 
The next morning wc got under way and steamed 
into four fathoms, when we could just see some low 
land in the distance, which our observations told us 
was about the mouth of the Pi-ho River. We had not 
had a breath of wind since leaving Shanghae, and had 
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