The streets in which the poor dwell are formed of low, small, dark, and
dirty houses, of two or three rooms each. The streets of dwellings are
as mean and ugly as those of shops are brilliant and picturesque.

This is a meagre outline of what may be called the anatomy of this
ancient city, which dates from the fourth century B.C., when it was
walled only by a stockade of bamboo and mud, but was known by the name
of "the martial city of the south," changed later into "the city of
rams." At this date it has probably greater importance than it ever
had, and no city but London impresses me so much with the idea of solid
wealth and increasing prosperity.

My admiration and amazement never cease. I grudge the hours that I am
obliged to spend in sleep; a week has gone like half a day, each hour
heightening my impressions of the fascination and interest of Canton,
and of the singular force and importance of the Chinese. Canton is
intoxicating from its picturesqueness, color, novelty and movement.
to-day I have been carried eighteen miles through and round it,
reveling the whole time in its enchantments, and drinking for the first
time of that water of which it may truly be said that who so drinks
"shall thirst again"--true Orientalism. As we sat at mid-day at the
five-storied pagoda, which from a corner of the outer wall overlooks
the Tartar city, and ever since, through this crowded week, I have
wished that the sun would stand still in the cloudless sky, and let me
dream of gorgeous sunlight, light without heat, of narrow lanes rich in
color, of the glints of sunlight on embroideries and cloth of gold,
resplendent even in the darkness, of hurrying and colored crowds in the
shadow, with the blue sky in narrow strips high above, of gorgeous
marriage processions, and the "voice of the bridegroom and the voice of