have gardens on their roofs. These are called "flower boats," and are
of noisy and evil reputation. Then there are tiers of three-roomed,
comfortable house boats to let to people who make their homes on the
water in summer to avoid the heat. "Marriage boats," green and gold,
with much wood carving and flags, and auspicious emblems of all kinds;
river junks, with their large eyes and carved and castellated sterns
lying moored in treble rows; duck boats, with their noisy inmates;
florists' boats, with platforms of growing plants for sale; two-storied
boats or barges, with glass sides, floating hotels, in which evening
entertainments are given with much light and noise; restaurant boats,
much gilded, from which proceeds an incessant beating of gongs; washing
boats, market boats, floating shops, which supply the floating
population with all marketable commodities; country boats of fantastic
form coming down on every wind and tide; and, queerest of all, "slipper
boats," looking absurdly like big shoes, which are propelled in and out
among all the heavier craft by standing in the stern.

One of the most marvelous features of Canton is the city of house
boats, floating and stationary, in which about a quarter of a million
people live, and it may with truth be added are born and die. This
population is quite distinct in race from the land population of
Canton, which looks down upon it as a pariah and alien caste. These
house boats, some of which have a single bamboo circular roof, others
two roofs of different heights, and which include several thousand of
the marvelous "slipper boats," lie in tiers along the river sides, and
packed closely stem and stern along the canals, forming bustling and
picturesque water streets. Many of the boats moored on the canals are
floating shops, and do a brisk trade, one end of the boat being the
shop, the other the dwelling-house. As the "slipper boats" are only
from fifteen to twenty feet long, it may be imagined, as their breadth