I Must Mention A Sight Which I Accidentally Saw, One Evening, Upon The Pearl Stream.

It was, as I afterwards heard, a thanksgiving festival in honour of the gods, by the owners of two junks that had made a somewhat long sea voyage without being pillaged by pirates, or overtaken by the dangerous typhoon.

Two of the largest flower boats, splendidly illuminated, were floating gently down the stream. Three rows of lamps were hung round the upper part of the vessels, forming perfect galleries of fire; all the cabins were full of chandeliers and lamps, and on the forecastle large fires were burning out of which rockets darted at intervals with a loud report, although they only attained the elevation of a few feet. On the foremost vessel there was a large mast erected, and hung with myriads of coloured paper lamps up to its very top, forming a beautiful pyramid. Two boats, abundantly furnished with torches and provided with boisterous music, preceded these two fiery masses. Slowly did they float through the darkness of the night, appearing like the work of fairy hands. Sometimes they stopped, when high flames, fed with holy perfumed paper, flickered upwards to the sky.

Perfumed paper, which must be bought from the priests, is burnt at every opportunity, and very frequently beforehand, after every prayer. From the trade in this paper the greater portion of the priests' income is derived.

On several occasions, accompanied by Herr von Carlowitz, I took short walks in the streets near the factory. I found the greater pleasure in examining the beautiful articles of Chinese manufacture, which I could here do at my leisure, as the shops were not so open as those I saw during my excursion round the walls of Canton, but had doors and windows like our own, so that I could walk in and be protected from the pressure of the crowd. The streets, also, in this quarter were somewhat broader, well paved, and protected with mats or planks to keep off the burning heat of the sun.

In the neighbourhood of the factory, namely in Fousch-an, where most of the manufactories are situated, a great many places may be reached by water, as the streets, like those in Venice, are intersected by canals. This quarter of Canton, however, is not the handsomest, because all the warehouses are erected on the sides of the canals, where the different workmen have also taken up their residence in miserable huts that, built half upon the ground and half upon worm-eaten piles, stretch far out over the water.

I had now been altogether, from July 13th to August 20th, five weeks in Canton. The season was the hottest in the whole year, and the heat was really insupportable. In the house, the glass rose as high as 94.5 degrees, and out of doors, in the shade, as high as 99 degrees. To render this state of things bearable, the inhabitants use, besides the punkas in the rooms, wicker-work made of bamboo. This wicker-work is placed before the windows and doors, or over those portions of the roofs under which the workshops are situated. Even whole walls are formed of it, standing about eight or ten feet from the real ones, and provided with entrances, window-openings, and roofs.

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Words from 63245 to 63799 of 187810