Page:Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastwards to Burma.djvu/26

 deliberately discussed on the terrible subject of the Kotow. Reading in Lord Amherst's manuscript the faithfully minute accounts of the trickery by which the Mandarins, without regard to the colour or number of their buttons, sought to entrap him into private and unintended performance of the indispensable obeisance, we can hardly help pitying these artistic rogues at the failure of practices so conscientiously devised and laboriously executed. The end was that the Ambassador had to make a miserable retreat from the outskirts of the Court.

Lord Amherst and his suite were conducted through the inland provinces to Canton. Little by little, as day passed day in the lazy voyage along the Great Canal, vexations and regrets gave way to delighted contemplation of the novel scenes through which he passed. On the whole he had no great reason to complain of want of good-nature in his guides. They allowed him as much liberty as was compatible with their instructions, and the farther he got from the capital the more marked were the attentions paid to him. His reception at Canton was, on the part of the Chinese, so respectful, and on the part of the Englishmen, whether belonging to the factory or the ships of war, so abundantly cordial, that a nature even more resentful and brooding than that of the Ambassador might well have been tempted to forget the injury. But the memory of the affronts he had received could never be effaced. He was delighted with the aspect of the settlement, and was able to solace himself with