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when two of the Hong Merchants failed, owing more than three million dollars to foreigners. Yet on the whole the system worked well and has now become an honoured tradition of the trade.

This record exhibits some of its strangest phases after Canton became known to the Occident as a place of odd inhabitants and mysterious opportunities. The first British war-ship to enter the Pearl River was the Centurion. She arrived off Macao in 1741, and having effected some necessary repairs, she put to sea, captured the Spanish treasure-ship Acapulco, and sailed back to the river with her prize. The Chinese seem to have been perplexed by the event. Though not deeply versed in international law as coded in the West, they had an instinctive perception that their harbours ought not to be used as bases of warlike operations against the ships of a friendly Power. Commodore Anson's report represents them as entertaining "a strange notion of a ship which went about the world seeking other ships in order to take them," and the gallant officer having failed to bring them "to hear reason on that head," had to announce that he should not leave Canton until he got all the provisions he needed, which the frightened Chinese finally smuggled on board the Centurion. Curiously enough, the Hong Merchants also now began to discover an "incapacity for listening to reason" on the side of foreigners, and to represent them