The mission was introduced to the notice of the world by a humorous prelude, which may be quoted for the sake of the light it incidentally throws on the chronic state of China. On their way from Peking to Tientsin, seventy or eighty miles, the envoys halted at a large market-town, where a report met them of a phenomenon not very uncommon in those parts, especially in winter--a band of marauders who had been annoying the neighbourhood. The mission took refuge in an inn, resolved to stand a siege until aid should come. In this strait Mr Burlingame seems never to have thought of applying either to the local authorities of the town or to the Government he was serving, but despatched urgent messages to Peking, where there were escorts kept at the Russian and British Legations, and to Tientsin, where was the British gunboat Dove. His appeals were answered with alacrity from both sides. From Peking came a relief party of British and Russian soldiers in charge of members of the two Legations; from Tientsin a party of mounted bluejackets under Lieutenant Dunlop. They met at the half-way house where the mission lay, but nothing could be seen or heard of the besiegers. Mr Burlingame's party reached their port of embarkation without further adventure. Indeed the only serious matter that arose out of the imbroglio was a difference of opinion between one Vodkansky of the Cossack guard and Mulvaney, a sturdy Hibernian of the British escort, which the latter proposed to settle by the means in vogue among heroes before the days of Agamemnon. Tragic consequences were, however, averted by the soothing diplomacy of the representative of her Majesty's Legation, Mr Conolly, and the two Burlingame relief expeditions returned to their respective stations nothing the worse for a couple of days' outing in the bracing November air.
Mr Burlingame made his _début_ in the United States, first by eloquent speeches in San Francisco, and next by what assumed the form of serious negotiations at Washington. An orator cannot reasonably be held accountable for every detail of his orations, but Mr Burlingame's mission may be most favourably summarised by a few carefully chosen words of his own:--
1st. It was the object of the mission to disabuse the foreign Powers of an impression they were supposed to entertain, that the Chinese Government had entered upon a retrograde policy.