Luxury--Canton Afloat--An Al Fresco Lunch-Light and Color--A Mundane
Disappointment--Street Sights and Sounds--Street Costume--Food and
Restaurants--A Marriage Procession--Temples and Worship--Crippled Feet


REV. B. C. HENRY'S, CANTON, January 6.

In the week in which I have been here I have given myself up to
ceaseless sight-seeing. Almost the first sight that I saw on arriving
in this quarter, which is in Canton itself, was a number of Christian
refugees, old men, women, and children, who, having fled from a bloody
persecution which is being waged against Christianity about ninety
miles from Canton, are receiving shelter in the compound of the German
mission. It was late in the evening, and these poor refugees, who had
sacrificed much for their faith and had undergone great terror, were
singing hymns, and reading and worshipping in Chinese. In the place
from which they came a Christian of wealth wished to build a church,
and last week he was proceeding to do so, when the heathen, instigated
by the district mandarin, seized upon him and four other Christians,
and when he would neither say the word nor make the obeisance which is
regarded as equivalent to denying Christ, they wrapped him in cotton
wadding soaked in oil, tied him to a cross, and burned him, no
extremity of torture availing to shake his constancy. They cut off the
arms and legs of the four other persons, tied crosses to the trunks,
and then burned them. This deed, done so near Canton, has caused great
horror among the foreigners both here and at Hong Kong, and the deepest
sympathy is felt both with the converts and the missionary priests. In
the sympathy with the heroism and sufferings of those who have been
"faithful unto death," all the Protestant missionaries join heartily,
as in the belief that these victims are reckoned among "the noble army