Cheng, guardian of the prefecture of Kang-Hoa, Corea, ex officio general and governor, sends a communication to his excellency the American minister.
　In the spring of this year the board of rites, Peking, forwarded a dispatch conveying a letter from the honorable American envoy; to this my government speedily sent a reply, fully discussing the matters referred to, which it was requested might be transmitted through the same channel board of rites to your excellency.
　We feel that ― inasmuch as politeness and deference are held in such general estimation in your honorable country that she has long possessed a fame far beyond all other states ― your excellency must most probably so clearly comprehend the propriety of things as to take no light or hasty action. Why now do you cross from afar the vast ocean to penetrate another county? Even though you disclaim all purpose of killing or harming us, who can help being puzzled and suspicious?
　The barriers of defense of a country are important places, within which it is not allowable for foreign vessels to make their way without some previous understanding. This is the fixed rule of all nations. Hence it was the ascent of the river to the sea-gate by your vessels the other day that brought on the engagement between us. literally, the affair of mutual firing and alarming, which as you say that your intentions in coming to this country are good, it is much to be regretted should have occurred. On the arrival of your vessels, the court warned the civil and military authorities along the coast to avoid most carefully anything which should cause trouble or arouse ill-feeling, yet when your honorable vessels, not considering the fixed regulation of another country, penetrated its important pass, how could the officers, appointed to guard the closed portals of the frontier, whose duty it is to take measures of defense, calmly let it go by as of no consequence? Pray do not then be offended at what occurred.
　It is not perhaps because the board of rites at Peking had not yet transmitted our reply, to your letter to the King of Corea, thus leaving your excellency unacquainted with the various circumstances of my country, that your coming to Corea has taken place. Therefore, I now have the honor to inclose duplicate of this reply, from the perusal of which you may perhaps derive full and complete information. The non-intercourse of Corea with foreign states is a settled principle, established by our ancestors five centuries ago; a principle of which the whole world has heard, and of which the Emperor of China also is graciously aware. It is precisely because we must not break through the ancient policy of our ancestors that we cannot discuss and cannot settle that which the honorable envoy desires to discuss and to settle, whatever it may be. Why do you then wait for a high official to meet you?
　The myriad lands and the countless living sustained on the earth, and canopied by the sky, should all act in consonance with the nature originally bestowed upon them, and it is the will of Heaven and earth that the states of the East, and the nations of the West, regulating each in its own way its administration and its doctrines, and governing each its own people, should move on prosperously and concordantly without encroaching upon and taking away what is another’s. Surely your excellency is acquainted with this truth.
　Appreciating the hardships of a voyage of 10,000 li of wind and wave, I send some worthless articles as a trifling assistance to your table, as becomes the host. I trust you will not refuse to receive them, though insignificant. I am aware of the deficiencies of this dispatch.
　A necessary communication.

TUNG-CHIH, 10th year, 4th moon, and 19th day, (JUNE 6, 1871.)

[NOTE. ― With the foregoing were brought three bullocks, fifty chickens, and one thousand eggs, which were declined.]