We will now resume our narrative, in which the reader was left near Ping-shan, a place in round numbers eighteen hundred statute miles up the Yang-tsze Kiang, and eleven hundred distant from any place of residence of Europeans, excepting always the Roman Catholic missionaries in disguise. Having accompanied us so far, it would be unfair to leave him there in the lurch; and I shall therefore devote these last two chapters to relating our return journey to the coast. As no description of the country will be required after what has been said of it on the upward voyage, I shall confine myself to tracing our route, noting the halting-places, and giving the distances actually travelled;–which, by the help of the map attached to this volume, but still better by the chart of the river published on a large scale by my friend Mr. Arrowsmith, will be easily followed by any one: adding only a few observations which have been omitted in previous chapters.

Finding no inducement sufficient to prevail on our skipper or the boatmen to take us again near enough to Ping-shan to have another look at it, we left our halting-ground three miles below that place at 7 a.m. on the 30th May. Numbers of boats were continually descending with living freights of affrighted citizens, who gave us the most alarming accounts concerning the siege; but whether Ping-shan was ultimately captured or not we never learned.