worthy of confidence for any duty than him to whom these few words of earnest farewell are written. God bless you, my dear sir. "Ever truly yours, WILLIAM B. REED. "To Captain A. H. Foote, MANILLA, March 4th, 1858." These are extracts from Commander H. H. Bell's letters from Whampoa, dated April and May: "I have visited the burying-grounds three or four times, and could not discover that the graves of our dead had been molested otherwise than by the removal of the wooden head-boards-except in one instance, where three graves bordering upon a paddy-field had been dug away for the extension of said field; the wretches betraying themselves in this peculiarly Chinese theft by leaving the heads of the graves-say six inches deep-showing in the bank which they had cut away, though no part of the coffins remain-this does not look like malicious desecration. Mr. Everett's monument remains intact, having Chinese characters written on it; yet the grave of -'s little boy is said to have been broken up. they say, was much disliked by the natives. The tombs of the English were entirely destroyed." "I accompanied our consul as a passenger and guest; the 'Barrier Forts' are as we left them, no attempt having been made to renew them. The French frigate Capricieuse lay there. The city of Canton, along the line of the river as well as in the interior, is a sad spectacle, most of the houses having been deserted, and presenting nothing but ruins and desolation to the view-the broken walls and torn roofs giving melancholy evidence of the ruthless bombardments in the several attacks on the city. I found the streets quite deserted for a Chinese city, the people looking cowed and dejected, and apparently of the worst class. All who were able have retired to the neighboring cities and villages, under the terror of British guns." "Wentworth, the leper, whom you left here, is said to be a putrid mass. It is feared we shall have to receive him, for your charities excite no little feeling on the part of those who have to do the nursing." We close these two fighting Portsmouth chapters with an extract of a pleasant letter of Commander Foote to his eldest son, Augustus, then a little boy, dated Bangkok, June 7, 1857: Letter to his Son. 135 "It is not every young gentleman who can say he has a correspondent in this far land. Our sitting or reception room here is sixty feet square and thirty-five feet high, with a great deal of gilding about it, and some twenty large mirrors on its walls. We have every thing furnished us by the king. The attendants come in crawling on all fours, much as Willie did when he was a baby, and then they knock their heads on the floor as they approach you. The king lately lost five hundred out of fifteen hundred elephants in a fight. We have put up a flag-pole in our yard as high as the one on the New Haven Green, and have hoisted the American flag upon it." Recent occurrences in China have cast a new light on the policy of foreign nations with that empire. It is the testimony of intelligent residents in China who have watched the course of events, that the failure of England and France to exact reparation on the spot for injuries done by the Chinese, and the reference of these to the slow action of diplomacy, has been totally misunderstood; has given the impression to the Chinese that foreign nations were afraid of them, and without doubt was the real cause of the late terrible massacre. This tends indirectly to the justification (if aught more were needed) of the prompt action of the commander of the Portsmouth in attacking the Chinese forts in Canton River. CORRESPONDENCE. CHAPTER XII. BROOKLYN NAVY YARD. BEGINNINGS OF STRIFE. JUDGED by the estimate of ordinary lives, a period had now come when the subject of this memoir might have retired honorably from public service to a well-earned repose. After twenty-one years and three months of wearisome sea-service, under all suns and climes, reaping little more from the barren fields of ocean than bare reputation, this veteran wanderer and fighter might have said "Is there any peace In ever climbing up the climbing wave?" It is true that the end had come of his actual sea-life, but something remained for him to do that was still worthier and greater: "Old age hath yet his honor and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Not unbecoming men that strove with gods." A hearty letter from his true friend, Commodore Smith, greeted him in Portsmouth, N. H., on his return, congratulating him "on the termination of a successful cruise, reflecting additional honor upon your commission and character." He did not yet have, and probably never did have, a dream of idle ease. He was really too restlessly ambitious a man to be inactive; though his ambition was of a fine quality, ending not in self, but in the public good. After a few months' rest he received an appointment to the command of the United Philanthropic Labors. 137 States Navy Yard in Brooklyn, N. Y., October 26, 1858. Before he entered upon the duties of this station, while at his home in New Haven, and also during the time he lived in Brooklyn, his thoughts were much engrossed in public affairs -benevolent, religious, and political. His correspondence, which was naturally for the most part professional, and concerned itself with matters which had engaged his mind in the past, still had the great objects of the public welfare in view. He wrote and spoke much on the subject of the suppression of the slave-trade. His grand panacea, which was good as far as it went, and to which he clung until, with thousands of others, he was taught a better lesson, was African colonization. He was, however, persevering in his collection of facts, and in his appeals to the government on the subject of a vigorous suppression of the trade at its original source, the African coast. He thought that the responsibility rested in a great measure with our country. He would have our government, like England, cleanse its hands of all that iniquity, and, having clean hands, it could act with power with other nations in its negotiations on this subject. One of his correspondents, Captain Le Roy, commanding the steamer Mystic, then cruising off the African coast, seems to have had less confidence than himself in the pure benevolence of England. This officer thus writes: "I like your article much, and when I fall in with Calhoun and Godon, will send it to them. I believe a few more such articles will have the effect of drawing public attention in such a way toward this nefarious traffic as may cause the establishing of measures to break it up. I regret that my response to your inquiry about the palm-oil in the Congo should have been incorrect; but, as I subsequently stated, palm-oil within the last year has begun to be an article of manufacture and export from the Congo. With regard to the 'right of search,' as a general rule I am opposed to its exercise by foreign vessels, especially by our English brethren. I must confess that, with all my regard for John Bull, I am not so perfectly satisfied that he would always do the clean thing, and unless he were held to a strict accountability, our legitimate traders might be subjected to great annoyances. "As to the idea of the suppression of the slave-trade being a matter of philanthropy with Master John, I don't believe it, and I do not believe one hundredth part of the zeal would be exhibited by him if he did not receive so much per ton for every vessel captured, and so much a head for every slave; in fact, I have known an English captain honestly to confess that he came out here to make money; and when it has been suggested that it would be a good plan to put an officer and boat's crew from an English man-of-war aboard of our ships, and the opposite, so as to make possible the more complete identification and interruption of the illegal traffic, the response has been, 'But will you share prize-money with us?' Prize-money is what they are after, and without it poor nig may be a slave to the end of his life for all they care. As to cruising in company with our vessels, they do not wish it. If there is a suspicious craft about that will not deny its American nationality, so as to enable Master John to seize him, he will possibly, in the exercise of his magnanimity, discover that the grapes are sour,' and inform one of our cruisers; but if the fellow has cargo aboard, he will endeavor to persuade him to haul down his flag and deny his nationality by promising to let him land, or work upon his fears by threatening to hand him over to some American manof-war. Of course, knowing his offense is punishable by our laws with death, the slaver does not long hesitate. We must change our laws upon the subject. It must no longer be declared piracy, and punishable with death, but a penal offense. Does it ever occur to the vaunters of British philanthropy that few or none of all the slaves captured by British cruisers ever return to their native soil-that they are taken to British colonies and apprenticed? And what is the nature of that apprenticeship? Poor abused Brother Jonathan puts his big hand into his pocket and sends captured slaves back to Africa, and supports them there until they can do something for themselves; yet honest old John, who steals the slaves from the slavers, and calls them apprentices, rolls up his eyes and groans over American insincerity in countenancing the slave-trade, and thinks complacently of how much he is doing for the suffering negro race. Our friend Monsieur goes to work systematically, and has extensive and comfortable barracoons put up; buys his apprentices, and has them decently cared for, and sent in a regular way to his colonies. Though called apprentices, they are still slaves. For some time past a great rivalry has existed between the French factories and the slave-traders, which |