called, to the Hong merchants, great men upon Change, whose word is as good as their bond, and who can give bonds for thousands, between whom and the Europeans mutual confidence and respect prevails.
With all its drawbacks, Canton is a place that will well repay the stranger for a visit, provided he has strength of constitution enough to rough it. He will find himself quite in a new world, and yet in a world full of originality of enterprise and of interest; and feel impressed with the opinion that we outside barbarians have been indebted to them for many of the comforts, conveniences and refinements of society, with this difference that whereas they have stood still for the last two or three thousand years, we have continued to improve upon their antitypes.
I have thus furnished a very brief sketch of the places towards the East, resorted to by invalids from India, and as I have spent some time at all of them, I could easily have drawn more largely upon my notes, but more details would be out of place at present. When an officer has no organic disease and is merely suffering from debility or slow but long continued fever, or when a long residence at an out station has rusted the springs of life and deranged his nervous system, no voyage of the same duration promises such advantages as one to the Straits and China. While on board
