PROSPEROUS STATE OF NING-PO.

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it is a crowded and bustling city. The gay medicine-stores, the cook-houses, the shops of rich silks and furs, the confection-rooms, and the chinaware, with the boat-building in the suburbs, and busy workmen in all directions, give a life and animation charming to behold.

Poor Mrs. Noble, Lieutenant Douglas Scott, and others, have reason to remember Ning-po, having suffered confinement there in cages, after having been wrecked in the Kite. Captain Anstruther, also, knows what the cage is to his cost.

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SHANG-HAI A PLACE OF IMPORTANCE.

Wooden cages, or prisons, in which culprits are kept, in China are very common. They are about three feet high, two feet and a half long, and fourteen inches wide, having a trap-door at the top, through which the culprit is forced IN. Some of these cages have a hole, through which the head may be thrust, but usually they are made without it. Unhappy is the lot of the poor prisoner who, day after day, and week after week, is cooped up in this horrible confinement.

Whang, art thou still a shop-keeper at Ningpo? Hast thou forgotten our memorable discussion on the Shoo-king, and the light-hearted prank played thee by one of my companions, of altering the inscriptions at thy door-posts, thereby making thee a vender of fans and chopsticks, and setting aside thy calling of a respectable bookseller? Prosperous be thy daily affairs, and peaceful thy nightly slumbers!

Shang-hai is about a hundred miles to the north of Ning-po, and standing as it does on the Woosung, which flows into the estuary of the great river Yang-tse-kiang, or Child of the Ocean, is a place of very great influence and importance. If you consult the map of China, you will see that the river Yang-tse-kiang not only flows through the empire a distance of between two and three thousand miles, but is the communication between the fertile districts at the mouth of the river and Nankin, and Pekin the capital. In a com

STREETS OF CANTON.

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mercial point of view, then, Shang-hai is of immense importance, as no doubt the British will experience every year; and now I must speak of Canton,

Canton, which is the European mode of pronouncing Kwong-tung (Extensive Eastern Province), is the name of the whole province. Custom, however, has given this name to the city. In the provinces there are ten of the largest districts called Foo or Fu; ten of the next rank called Chow or Chew; and seventy-eight of those called Une, or Hyeu.

The city of Canton on the Chookeang, or Pearl River, is one of the oldest in the southern provinces. It may be about sixty miles from the sea, and its walls take in a circuit of six or seven miles. Crowded with population, it is the most important city in the empire, excepting Pekin, the capital. The city, the suburbs, and the river, are all thickly peopled.

Canton is famous both for manufactures and merchandise, and the number of foreigners who visit it is very great. Its houses are built, for the most part, of one story; those of the wealthy are very elegant, and magnificently furnished. There are in the place six or seven hundred streets paved with large flag-stones. "Golden Street," "GoldenFlower Street," Dragon Street," " Flying-Dragon Street," and "Martial-Dragon Street," are among them. The streets on the whole are very narrow,

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BEGGARS OF CANTON.

varying from four or five feet, to seven or eight. Sedan-chairs are used, but no wheel-carriages. Coolies, or porters, carry the heavy burdens. If the place had not a very large population, there could never be in it, as there are now, four thousand shoemakers, seventeen thousand silk-weavers, and fifty thousand manufacturers of cloth, nor could the people employ, as they do, upwards of seven thousand barbers.

There are beggars everywhere, and Canton has its share of them. One company of them is known by the name of "The Heavenly Flower Company" a pretty name, truly, for a troop of long-tailed beggars! I have already given you the names of the foreign factories outside the walls of Canton, the masses of people that are seen continually in front of these immense depots, without any seeming object, or occupation, are truly astonishing. Whence they come and where they go appears a mystery, for no sooner does one part of the human stream pass away than it is succeeded by another. How are they fed and clothed, and where do they lodge?-are questions that rise in the mind of every stranger. The crowd is visible by day, but how do they of whom it is composed dispose of themselves by night? In London lodging-houses, human beings are packed up together in small compass, and this principle must be carried still farther in Canton.

It is true that at Canton they have a resource

THE TANKA PEOPLE.

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which we have not in London, for the river is open to them, where, crowded in barges, sanpans, and boats of all kinds, they herd together by thousands; yet still there is much of wretchedness in the city, where poverty has to accommodate itself to many a loathsome abode. This is not the case in Canton alone; for in other cities and towns, though not to the same extent, the same consequences arise from the great amount of the population. The rivers, the canals, and lakes teem with human life. The Boat-town," as it is called, on the river at Canton, is an object of great curiosity to all foreigners. Here are crowded together the Tanka people in a vast multitude, with crowds of pirates and bad characters-the refuse of the city.

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The Tan-ka, or egg-house boat people on the river, rank very low, so that the poorest peasant considers himself far above them. Poverty has many temptations to crime, and these people being wretchedly poor, there is much of vice and misery among them; this not only arises from themselves, but also from the abandoned characters on shore, who make the "Boat Town," or Floating Town,"” a City of Refuge" from their pursuers the officers of justice. Eighty thousand huts floating on the water, inhabited in a great degree by poverty, crime, and squalid wretchedness are not an object to be looked upon without emotion.

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