The Cannonade at Kowloon: British Broadside Answers a Mandarin's Embargo

LONDON, SEPT. 4 — By the overland mail from Canton, we have intelligence of a sharp and sanguinary affray in the waters of Kowloon, which may justly be regarded as the opening of a tragedy upon the grand stage of the Celestial Empire. It appears that the Commissioner Lin, with a zeal worthy of a better cause, had laid an embargo upon all foodstuffs for the British factories, hoping thereby to starve the foreign merchants into submission. The port was blockaded by a formidable array of war junks, their painted sterns and gilded dragons giving them a barbaric splendour most terrible to behold.

The British superintendent, Captain Elliot, finding remonstrance vain and his countrymen reduced to short allowance, resolved upon a decisive stroke. On the fourth of July, the gallant frigate Volage, with her consort Hyacinth, weighed anchor and bore down upon the junks, which lay anchored in line off the village of Kowloon. A hail of round shot and grape was poured into the Chinese vessels, which returned the fire with spirit, though their old-fashioned guns and fire arrows availed little against the disciplined broadsides of the King's ships. The engagement lasted but a few hours, yet the carnage was fearful; many junks were sunk or disabled, and the shore batteries were silenced, their embrasures torn and blackened.

It is said that the loss on our side was trifling, but among the Chinese it is computed that upwards of a hundred men were slain or drowned, and the waters of the bay were stained crimson with their blood. The object of the expedition, the raising of the embargo, has been accomplished, though we fear the peace of these distant seas is now broken beyond repair. The opium traffic, which has been the cause of this quarrel, remains a question of grave moral import, and one cannot help but reflect that the cannon which speaks at Kowloon may echo round the world in ways unforeseen by the merchants of Leadenhall Street or the mandarins of Peking.

Already the tea merchants whisper of war, and the price of that commodity has risen sharply in the London markets. Should the conflict spread, the overland route through the Red Sea and the Cape passage will both be taxed to their utmost. We shall keep our readers informed of every fresh despatch from those far-off waters, where the dragon and the lion have at last closed in deadly embrace.