Pictures from Back Christmas News Letters.

We give above another illustration of this brilliant passage of arms in the Chinese waters. The appended extracts, descriptive of the fight and its results are from the vigorous pen of the Times Correspondent at Hong Kong :-

When Commodore Keppel passed us at dawn he steamed away up the channel to the right of Hyacinth Island, until he came under the six gun battery, and within fire of the junks. Here his vessel came aground, and the Plover coming up, the Commodore transferred himself to her, but as she could not get up, he got into his own galley, and followed by the row boats of the Calcutta, the Bittern and the Niger, pulled straight away through the fire. The big junk that lay across the channel was boarded in her own smoke. As usual, when the assailants grew very near the Chinamen fired a broadside and also a train, and slipped into the water on the other side. The boats were scarcely free of her when she blew up. Right in among the thirty five junks dashed Keppel and his cheering dare-devils, receiving their fire and driving their crews away as they approached. Vain were the Chinamen's stinkpots, their three pronged spears, and their ingenious nets, so contrived as to fall over a boat's crew and catch them like herrings, while they spear them through the meshes.

To utilise such ingenious inventions John Chinaman must wait till the boats come alongside, and this he has not yet tutored his nerves to accomplish. "Never wait, lads !" cried the Commodore; "leave those rascals to the gun-boats and the fellows behind [these would be Henry and others from the Nankin] ; push on ahead"

Through this wilderness of junks they pulled, driving out their crews by sheer audacity, and leaving little to be done by those who should come after. They shot through the lines up into the vacant channel. Some of his boats had been hulled by the junks; perhaps some lingered to pay a visit to a deserted Chinaman, or to stop his mouth; but Keppel still pressed onward, and where he goes he always gets some to follow. With four galleys and three boom boats, carrying a gun each in the it bows, they speed away from the conquered junks and hold on for nearly four miles. but now there are junks masts in sight, and every one knows that a fight is coming. A little further on, and they come upon their prey, and also upon one of those strong positions which the Chinese have now learnt to take.

At that part of the Fatsham branch which they had now reached there is an island shaped like a leg of mutton placed length wise in the river. The broad part is towards the British boats, and across the knuckle-end twenty large junks lie moored to the shore and aground. The consequence of this position is that, that to attack them, the British boats must pass though one of the two passages, both of which narrow to a funnel; and upon that narrow neck of water the whole of the fire of the twenty junks will be concentrated. One of these funnel passages has been staked, and is impassable; the other has not water to carry two boats abreast. At this perilous passage Keppel and his crew now dashed. The three boom boats took the ground in attempting to follow.

No sooner did the boats appear in the narrow passage than twenty 32 pounders sent twenty round shot and a hundred smaller guns sent their full charges of grape and canister at a range of 500 yards right among them. The effect was terrible. Keppel was sounding with the boat hook for water for the boom boats and went back amid the storm to get them up. They start afresh and make another effort to get through. The Commodore pushes ahead.

Keppel's galley, not a large mark, is hit three times in two minutes; a 32 pounder shot strikes Major Kearney in the breast, tearing him to pieces. He must have died without a sensation. Young Baker, a midshipman of the Tribune, who wore upon his finger a ring bequeathed to him by his brother, who was killed at Inkerman, is down, mortally wounded. The Commodore's coxswain is killed and every man of his crew is wounded. But the miracle is, not that the men are falling but that any escape. Captain Cochrane has the sleeve of his coat torn away by a shot which leaves him unharmed.. A round shot enters the Tribune's boat and passes along her line of keel, from stem to stern, without touching a man. " That was close, Victor", said Keppel to his Flag Lieutenant , as a cannon shot passed between their heads. Fortunately for himself, Victor(Prince Victor of Hohenlohe, as thorough and as unpretending a British seaman as if his name were Drake or Jervis) was leaning forwards and using his handkerchief as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding of a seaman whose hand had just been blown off, otherwise that ball must have taken Victor's head off.

For the first time I appreciated the far sighted wisdom of the Admiral's plan of attack. By leading up his ships at dead low water he got not only obtained the advantage of a rising tide when his steamers grounded upon the shoals and unknown impediments, but he also made sure of finding the junks all aground, knowing as he did that they were moored along each shore, to leave the channel clear for ordinary traffic. Thus the crews were obliged either to fight or run. Had he taken them at even at even a quarter flood they had been afloat. Some of the hindermost would have been destroyed , and by fire or by sinking would have blocked the channel, while the rest would have escaped up the numberless creeks which the Chinamen only knew.

It was three o'clock when the Commodore Keppel returned to his flag ship, which was now anchored where the Chinese Admiral's junks had been moored at the commencement of the engagement.

Not a junk was preserved. Their materials are so inflammable that they readily ignite one another; and , as we make no use of them, they are not worth saving at the price of danger to men. As it was., the shot from their heated guns rushed about in a most unpleasant manner. At sundown the view from the deck of the flag ship was a mixture of the grotesque and the sublime. The boats were all adorned with barbaric spoils; banners upon every breeze. Mandarins' coats and Mandarins' breeches were freely worn. Commodore Elliott's crew were equipped each with a Mandarin's hat and fox tails. They had dutifully reserved one for the Commodore; but I must confess I did not see him put it on. Around, as far as the eye could reach, following the windings of the maze of creeks, eighty- nine war junks were smouldering or blazing, and every five minutes an explosion shook the air. The Cantonese had said that Commodore Elliot's expedition in Escape Creek only captured a few deserted fishing boats. From their own verandas they could see, side by side, the sleep of the weary on the deck of the Coromandel; and so ended the 1st of June.

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Picture Seven.

Picture Eight.

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Picture Ten.