kily extinguished, did great mischief during the time it continued,
for it consumed an hundred shops and eleven streets full of warehouses,
so that the damage amounted to an immense sum. It raged, indeed, with
unusual violence, for in many of the warehouses there were large
quantities of camphor, which greatly added to its fury, and produced a
column of exceeding white flame, which shot up into the air to such a
prodigious height that the flame itself was plainly seen on board the
Centurion, though she was thirty miles distant.

Whilst the Commodore and his people were labouring at the fire, and the
terror of its becoming general still possessed the whole city, several of
the most considerable Chinese merchants came to Mr. Anson to desire that
he would let each of them have one of his soldiers (for such they styled
his boat's crew from the uniformity of their dress) to guard their
warehouses and dwelling-houses, which, from the known dishonesty of the
populace, they feared would be pillaged in the tumult. Mr. Anson granted
them this request, and all the men that he thus furnished to the Chinese
behaved greatly to the satisfaction of their employers, who afterwards
highly applauded their great diligence and fidelity. By this means the
resolution of the English at the fire, and their trustiness and
punctuality elsewhere, was the subject of general conversation amongst
the Chinese, and the next morning many of the principal inhabitants
waited on the Commodore to thank him for his assistance, frankly owning
to him that they could never have extinguished the fire of themselves,
and that he had saved their city from being totally consumed. And soon
after a message came to the Commodore from the Viceroy, appointing the
30th of November for his audience, which sudden resolution of the
Viceroy, in a matter that had been so long agitated in vain, was also
owing to the signal services performed by Mr. Anson and his people at the
fire, of which the Viceroy himself had been in some measure an
eye-witness. The fixing this business of the audience was, on all
accounts, a circumstance which Mr. Anson was much pleased with, as he was
satisfied that the Chinese Government would not have determined this
point without having agreed among themselves to give up their pretensions
to the duties they claimed, and to grant him all he could reasonably ask;
for, as they well knew the Commodore's sentiments, it would have been a
piece of imprudence