The Sun.
London, England, 1858-02-26 00:00:00

CAPTURE OF CANTON.

We have received, by Extraordinary Express,
papers and correspondence from Canton to Jan. 15,
and from Calcutta to Jan. 23. Our Bombay corre-
spondence has not yet reached us.

FROM THE SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE " TIMES."
CANTON, SATURDAY, JAN. 2.

We have now been five days upon the heights
and walls of the city of Canton, but the plain of
chimney-less roofs which lies at our feet is as im-
pervious as ever. Our lines down this Magazine-
hill are net very extended, and our quarters are
not very luxurious. In the great open joss-house
on the top of the hill, colonels, and subalterns, and
orderlies, and servants, huddle almost indiscrimi-
nately. We sleep on the stone floor, wraptJed only
in our blankets. We make fires to cook our food
in the bronze sacrificial urns ; the servants, who
have no blankets, wrap themselves in the dusty
altar cloths ; the stores of red votive candles serve
to faintly illumine the dingy building, and also to
grfase our boots ; the table where the offerings
were laid is applied to the purposes of the officers'
mass ; the Brigade Major, has made his office in one
corner. The great gilded idol looks down serenely
upon his new race of votaries. Ftrtuuately, the
roof is unbroken, but the appearance of the neigh-
bourhood is not one of perfect repair. Al 3 inch
shell has burst upon the stone-terrace in the imme-
diate front, and made a crater from which every
mar-lying thing flew up in fragments. At the back
there is a Chinese battery with long guns of curious
antiquity, mounds of grape shot, and inconve-
nient quantities of loose powder ; but this has
received so many attentions from those dis-
tant ships whose square-yards are only just
visible here, that we climb about at the risk of
dreaking our shins, or bringing down upon our
heads a tottering shed. The spot where I have
sought shelter is the very point to which all our
heavy ordnance was directed ; for it was the key of
the city defences. Against these fortress temples
the monster mortars on the Dutch Folly roar,
hisherwards the French Phlegethon thew her great
conical shells and the gunboats pointed their 10-
ineh guns. Downwards many steep wide flights of
granite steps descend. Sometimes they are lost to
sis4;ht by the roofs of the joss-houses and villas lower
down, sometimes they are hidden by the trunks or
foliage of the ancient trees. We know nothing yet
of what is below, for a pattering fire salutes any
one who ventures a few yards away, and the orders
are strict not to provoke this, lest we be obliged in
returning it to damage the city. We see enough,
however, in the upheaved terraces and perforated
roofs to tell us that this must have been an unquiet
residence on the day and night of the 28th of Dec.,
and we are not greatly astonished at knowing that
the garrison was found much disheartened on the
morning of the 29th.

:But, although wo cannot yet walk about leisurely
at the foot of Magazine-hill, we can walk the walls,
and in another day or two we shall be able to pass
without an escort to our ships. Captain Hall is
making a new landing-place at the south-eqt point
of the city, and it is already looming so smart and
trim that people call it " Hall's-terrace." But this
is quite a new affair. Order is only beginning to
reign in our communications. It was quits a
different thing when, on the second clay after the
ass suit, forced by hunger and by thirst, and by sore
bones aching by contact with those joss-house flag-
stones, I descended from our heights on the despe-
rate enterprise of getting up a certain portmanteau
and warm wraps, a two-dozen case of she rry, and
• another case full of preserved meats, all which I had
deposited for safety on board one of her Majesty's
ships. This was a more hopeless quest than any ever
made after a golden fleece, and as it was successful
only after two days' incessant week and watching,
it gave me full opportunity of seeing everything
that was going on, from the landing-place to head-
quarters.. Talk of Balakleva, that interesting village
in its palmiest days was not such an entanglement
of confusion as the landing-place which formed the
terminus of the communication between the army
and the ships. The point is where a shallow stream-
lot or drain falls into the river, about a mile to the
east of the south-eastern corner of the city wall.
Suburban waterside hovels once covered the area
upon which the promiscuous crowd is now raging
and shouting and pushing and struegling ;
but
those hovels are now only heaps of rubbish. 2() or
30 ships' boats have their bows against the hard,
the Commissariat lorch, the General's chop-boat
(which in the confusion was once seized upon by a
French ship-of-war and taken down the river),
several gunboats, and the Coromandel lie off in the
river. Packages innumerable, baggages and bales,
barrels and cases, munitions of war and munitions
for the stomach, are piled about in mountains.
Soon after I first saw this scene the thronging mul-
titude were hushed, for a strong escort aKeared
bringing down the wounded. Many a wan face
passed by which we were glad to recognise, even
though distorted by pain or flung back in lassi-
tude ; for when a man is hit the rumour
always spreads that lie is killed, and many of
them had been already spoken of as dead. No-
thing could be more promptly or more tenderly
doue than the removal of our wounded. Large
hospital ships'-boats, previously fitted for even a
greater emergency, were near at hand ; and in those
capacious floating houses they were all safely placed
as swiftly as could be gently done. Then the Babel
recommenced ; everybody wanted an escort, and
everybody wanted a troop of Coolies. Oh those
patient, lusty, enduring Coolies! It was a valuable
legacy which Colonel Wetherall left us, that Cooly
)rps. They carried the ammunition on the day
of the assault close up to the rear of our columns,
at id when a cannon shot took off the head of one of
th ern the others only cried " Ey yaw !" and laughed
an worked away as met rily as ever. Their eooduct
het throughout been admirable, and Capt Temple,
"t he King of the Coolies," deserves credit for the
ma ,nner in which he has handled them. Well
dr( used and well fed, wearing the cotton uniform of
a t: niinese soldier--except that the Chinese charac
tea a on the jacket of the Imperial " ping" are re-
plowed by an English number, and that the words
" Army Train" are writt n in conspicuous charac-
ters round their conical caps—these stout fellows,
with their bamboo poles, are at once the envy and
the terror of the Chinese population. "Two Coolies
and. leave to join an escort" form the highest im-
mediate earthly aspirations of many an officer of no
meal rank who is without a change of raiment, and
who has worked hard fur three days arc' tasted no
P 94( Ir. Other alicerS) a numerous class, aro much