On various occasions during this part of our voyage, opportunity brought us in contact with the representatives of France and England, our fellow-passengers. Baron Gros was generally reserved in manner; Lord Elgin, on the contrary, frank and open. The latter expressed his views that an advance on Pekin had become a matter of necessity; in his negotiations with the Chinese, he meant to ask only for what is reasonable and just, and having done so to obtain it; but not to take advantage of one concession to base upon it a demand for another. He was of opinion that the season was too far advanced to permit of further proceedings than the capture of the Tientsin forts, as a base of operations for the ensuing spring; some of the islands in the Gulf of Pehchili being taken possession of to serve as sanatoria. He observed, with reference to the existence of the Taiping rebellion, that if on the one hand the influence of the Court at Pekin were to be seriously weakened, the schemes of the rebel party would be thereby assisted; while on the other hand severe chastisement was necessary as retribution for treacherous action against our ambassadors and their ships at Taku. Therefore, the difficulty to be overcome was to punish and yet not seriously injure the Imperial power. But events were to outrun the anticipations so expressed.
Hong-Kong was reached on Midsummer Day. As the town of Victoria came in sight, the general aspect presented by it produced a favourable impression upon us; the light and airy style of houses rising in tiers above each other upwards along the precipitous mountain face, that mountain culminating in a peak some 1,500 feet above sea level, presented a panorama different altogether in character from anything we had hitherto seen. The circumstance that the town and the roads where the shipping lay were completely sheltered from the south-west monsoon then prevailing furnished full explanation for the oppressive damp heat to which we were at once introduced.[216] It became my painful duty to announce myself to the officer, who, by the fact of my arrival, was superseded in his position, with whom in his disappointment and chagrin I much sympathised.[217] Indeed, so greatly did he feel what he looked upon as the disgrace into which he had departmentally fallen, that his subsequent career was unfortunate; nor did he ever return to England.