Foreign Summary (Lord Elgin’s Report Quoted, 1859)

Source: The Pacific Commercial Advertiser. Honolulu: July 7, 1859. 

NANKIN. -From Lord Elgin’s report of his cruise up the River Yangtse Kiang, to and beyond Nankin, as published in the China papers, we quite the following:

“From the ship’s tops we could discern the beleaguering hosts of the Imperialist army, crowning the hills in rear of Nankin, their encampments forming a complete and extended semi-circle round the devoted city which they have been so long and ineffectually engaged in besieging. In the course of the same afternoon, some flaunting rebels in gay colors had the audacity to wave defiant flags and fire gin galls at us, but when they brought a gun to bear upon us from a small redoubt, we considered the joke had gone far enough, and after two or three shots from the Retribution and Furious, a well directed 68 pounder from the former knocked the whole of their gingerbread Fort to smithereens, and sent its occupants scampering over the open plain, their long yellow and red robes streaming in the wind, in ludicrous dismay and confusion. That night we anchored near the rebel city of Taiping, from whence, in consequence, doubtless, of the affairs at the Redoubt, we received amicable overtures which however were very curtly responded to.   On the following day we were again delayed by shoals, and did not reach the rebel town or Woohoo till the afternoon of the 23rd. Here again our prestige had preceded us, and we were received with so much civility by the insurgents that some of us landed, and were treated with great politeness by their Chief, a Canton man of a low type, surrounded by a disorderly rabble of opium-smoking disreputable looking men and youth, the latter in preponderance, tricked out in the usual show of gaudy plumage. Altogether we were most unfavorably impressed with the general aspect of these gentry, whose religious knowledge consisted but of a confused jumble of the persons of the God head, and whose practice, to judge by the scourge they have proved to the country, the reputation they have left behind them, and their own admission, is far below that of professing Christians generally.”