has no marked features within or around it except the broad and
bridgeless tidal river which sweeps through it at a rapid rate. In the
distance are the White-Cloud hills, which were painted softly in
amethyst on a tender green sky, and nearer are some rocky hills, which
are red at all hours of daylight. Boats and masts conceal the view of
the city from the river to a great extent, but even when from a vantage
ground it is seen spread out below, it is so densely packed, its
streets are so narrow, and its open spaces so few, that one almost
doubts whether the million and a half of people attributed to it are
really crowded within the narrow area. From the river, and indeed from
any point of view, Canton is less imposing even than Tokiyo. Few
objects rise above the monotonous level, and the few are unimpressive.
There are two or three pagodas looking like shot towers. There is a
double-towered Romish cathedral of great size, not yet finished. There
is the "Nine-storied pagoda." But in truth the most prominent objects
from the river are the "godowns" of the pawnbrokers, lofty, square
towers of gray brick which dominate the city, play a very important
part in its social economy, and are very far removed from those
establishments with the trinity of gilded balls, which hide themselves
shamefacedly away in our English by-streets. At one part of the
riverside there are some substantial looking foreign houses among
trees, on the site of the foreign factories of former days, but they
and indeed all else are hidden by a crowd of boats, a town of boats, a
floating suburb. Indeed, boats are my earliest and strongest
impressions of what on my arrival I was hasty enough to think a mean
city. It is not only along the sides of the broad Pearl river, but
along the network of innumerable canals and creeks which communicate
with it, that they are found.

These boats, the first marvel of a marvelous city, have come between me