CHAPTER IV.
Honest travellers, who have visited Canton, have related twenty times the endeavours they have made to enter the walled city, the dangers they have encountered and the semi-success they have met with. Semi-success is an expression which disguises a poor falsehood; it replies beforehand to the indirect question:
"Well, what did you see?"
"Upon my honour!" says, emphatically, the boaster, who has his answer ready; "I had passed the great gate of Chin-se-Mun, the only one which gives access to the Tartar city, when"
I spare you the remainder of this common-place, tiresome, and absurd story. Poor people! the sterility of their imagination is a eulogy on their credulity! I own that, if I had felt the want of persuading my readers I had penetrated into the walled city, I should have adopted a completely different course. My experience of things human taught me, a very long time ago, that the Unknown usually conceals a deception, and I should simply
