ship. In coasting along the western shore, a view was obtained of the Great Wall of China, extending its vast, but unavailing defences, over the summits and along the skirts of hills and mountains. Stretching across to the opposite shore, she anchored, and completed her water, in a commodious bay, situated in lat. 39° 33' N., long. 121° 19' E. From thence Captain Maxwell proceeded to the southward until he reached the extreme Tartar point of the gulf; and then, steering in the same direction, passed through a cluster of islands, named by him the Company’s Groupe, which, with those at Mee-a-tau, may be said to divide the Yellow Sea from the gulf of Pe-tche-lee. He then stood to the eastward, and put into Che-a-tow bay, on the coast of Shan-tung, where he found the General Hewitt, and was soon after joined by Captain Hall, who had kept the coast of China in sight as much as possible, and obtained a complete knowledge of that part of the gulf lying between the Pei-ho and the place of rendezvous.
Had Captain Maxwell sailed from hence to Chu-san, and there awaited the change of the monsoon, any expectations originally formed by him would have been more than gratified by the result of this hasty survey: little, indeed, could he have anticipated the further extension and increased importance of discoveries that awaited him.
Leaving the General Hewitt to complete the ulterior objects of her voyage, the Alceste and Lyra sailed from Che-atow bay on the 29th Aug. and proceeded to examine the S.W. coast of Corea, where they had some interesting communications with the natives, who appear to have been prevented by the strict orders of their government from encouraging an intercourse, which, if liberated from this restraint, their inclinations would have led them to cultivate. The researches of Captain Maxwell in this quarter enabled him to rectify an enormous geographical error respecting the peninsula of Corea, and reveal the existence of myriads of islands, forming an archipelago, a fact before unknown and unsuspected. It is to be remarked, that the Lion, of 64 guns, employed to convey Lord Macartney, the former Ambassador, was the only ship which had ever before penetrated into the gulph of Pe-tche-lee; but her commander, Sir Erasmus
