Bienville, quarreling with other administrators since the…

The East Indiaman Endeavour had been sent to pilot the ships of the embassy to Tianjin, and joins the squadron when it reaches the Yellow Sea.

The mission arrives at the mouth of the Hai River (known as the Pei Ho in European sources of this time) on July 25, and drops anchor, finding the muddy water impassable for the larger vessels.

The gifts are unloaded from the British ships and transferred upstream to Dagu by junks.

From here, they are unloaded again onto smaller boats to Tongzhou, the endpoint of the Grand Canal.

Macartney and his group had continued separately to Dagu on the smallest British ships, the Jackall, the Clarence, and the Endeavour.

On August 6, Macartney and Staunton meet with Liang Kentang, Viceroy of Zhili, who has traveled from Baoding to see them.

Liang agrees to permit the Lion and Hindostan to return to Zhoushan at Macartney's request.

He also informs Macartney that the meeting with the emperor is to take place at the Chengde Mountain Resort in Rehe (Jehol), rather than in the capital (Beijing) as the British delegation had expected.