a town of China, in the province of Chili, at the junction of the Pei-ho with the Grand Canal, 70 miles S.E. of Pekin, of which it is the fort. It is walled, and built nearly in the form of a square, each side of which is about a mile in length, and has a massive gateway in the centre. From these gates the principal streets of the town proceed in straight lines, meeting in a kind of pagoda in the middle. The streets, unlike those of the southern towns in China, are broad and well paved; but the houses are mean, built in general of unburned brick, and in many cases only of mud. The only public buildings are some temples of no great architectural pretensions, and a few official residences. The Pei-ho is crossed by a bridge of boats, and its banks are lined on both sides with the suburbs of the town. The chief traffic in the streets is in water and fuel; and the whole place has a very decaying and impoverished aspect. It is said to have been formerly a place of much opulence and trade; but as it depended mainly on the trade carried on between the capital and the other parts of the empire by the great canal, it has declined in prosperity since the inundation of the Yellow River has broken the banks of the canal, and forced this trade into other channels. A treaty was concluded at Tien-tsin in 1858 by Lord Elgin, on behalf of England, with the celestial empire; and at the same time separate treaties were executed by the plenipotentiaries of France, Russia, and the United States. The chief provisions of the British treaty were, the residence of a minister at Peking, permission to travel and trade in all parts of the empire, the opening of several new ports, and the settlement of the question of transit dues. The population of Tien-tsin and its suburbs is stated at 500,000. (See Oliphant's *Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan*, Edinburgh and London, 1859.)