by the vessel, to ensure the execution of all orders from the hoppo and chief mandarin.  Besides the enormous imposition under the name of port charges, already mentioned, they have other strange methods of getting money.  Thus, though the small craft of the country are at liberty to carry all sorts of provisions on board for sale, yet every one of these must in the first place go to one of the chan-pans, and pay there a tax or consideration for leave to go to the strange vessel.  By this means, though provisions are here very plentiful, and ought therefore to be cheap, the price is enhanced at least a third.  The mandarins have also a practice of sending presents of wine, provisions, and expensive curiosities, to the captain and other officers; of all which, when the ship is ready to sail, they send an exact memorial with the prices charged, the last article being so much for the clerk drawing up the account; and all this must be discharged in money or commodities, before their arms and ammunition are returned.

During a stay of ten weeks at this port, they sufficiently experienced all the artifices of this covetous and fraudulent people, from whom Captain Clipperton had no way to defend himself, and was therefore obliged to submit to all their demands.  Towards the end of September, the season and their inclinations concurred to deliver them from this place; for by this time, even the common men began to be weary of the people, who shewed themselves finished cheats in every thing.  On the 25th September, their arms and ammunition were restored, and that same day the Success weighed from the harbour, going out into the road or gulf, in order to proceed for Macao, to have the ship surveyed, as the men insisted she was not in a condition for the voyage home.  Captain Clipperton affirmed the contrary, well knowing that the men insisted on this point merely to justify their own conduct, and to avoid being punished in England for their misbehaviour in China.

They weighed anchor from the Bay of Amoy, in the province of Tonkin,[246] on the 30th September, and anchored in the road of Macao on the 4th October.  This place had been an hundred and fifty years in the hands of the Portuguese, and had formerly been one of the most considerable places of trade in all China, but has now fallen much into decay.  The way in which the Portuguese became possessed of this place gives a good specimen of Chinese generosity.  In prosecuting their trade with China from India and Malacca, being often overtaken by storms, many of their ships had been cast away for want of a harbour, among the islands about Macao, on which they requested to have some place of safety allowed them in which to winter.  The Chinese accordingly gave them this rocky island, then inhabited by robbers, whom they expelled.  At first they were only allowed to build thatched cottages; but, by bribing the mandarins, they were permitted in the sequel to erect stone houses,