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to the Canton officials as "barbarous and fierce."

It was about this time that there appeared upon the scene a figure destined to play a lively part in the subsequent history of foreign relations with China,—the literatus with his placard. The political pasquinade had long been in vogue among the Chinese, but not until the middle of the eighteenth century did it occupy itself with the foreigner, caricaturing his acts and making slanderous additions to his already not spotless record. Much indignation was stirred among the little colony of oversea traders when they learned that insult was thus added to the injury they had long been suffering in pocket from the exactions of the Hong Merchants, who in proportion as they learned to better appreciate the risks involved in standing security for the gentle and orderly stranger, grew more anxious to compensate themselves at his expense.

Meanwhile the French and English sailors, whose ships lay in the river, were fighting and slaying each other, so that at length the Chinese authorities hit upon the expedient of assigning different places for the recreation of each nationality—Dane's Island for the English, French Island for the Gauls—and onlooking natives gathered confirmation of the truth of the epithets "fierce and barbarous."

Then followed a formal veto against the pursuit of foreign trade elsewhere than at Canton;