to the British Consulate at Ningpo, and started off immediately,
travelling up to Shanghai in a trim little 150-ton opium schooner
called the _Iona_. The voyage should have taken a week; it took three.
At first a calm and then the sudden burst of the north-east monsoon
made progress impossible; the schooner tacked back and forth for a
fortnight, advancing scarcely a mile, and all this time her single
passenger could just manage to take seven steps on her little deck
without wetting his feet. Then, to make matters worse, provisions
gave out, and the ship's company was reduced for twelve days to an
unsavoury diet of water-buffalo and peanuts--all they could get from
a nearby island. Was it any wonder that Hart could never afterwards
endure the taste of peanuts, or that at the mere sight of a passing
water-buffalo his appetite was clean gone for the day?

He found Shanghai in the hands of the Triads (rebels), and a friend,
one of the missionaries, took him to see their famous chief, who was
said to have risen, not from the ranks, but from the stables of an
American merchant. With Mr. (afterwards Sir Rutherford) Alcock he also
went into the other camp to visit the commander of the Imperialist
forces, a Mongol, the Governor of the Province and a man of fine
presence. He was the first specimen of the Mandarin class that Robert
Hart had seen, and consequently the details of the interview remained
in his memory.

In later years he would sometimes describe what interested him most
as, silent and inconspicuous, he observed the doings of his seniors.
It was not the crowd of petty officials standing about, though they
were curious enough to a newcomer in their long official robes and
hats decorated with peacock's feathers; it was not the conversation
going on between Alcock and the Governor; it was simply the way the