Entering the Pearl River, a fine stream 500 miles in length, whose
affluents spread like a fan over two provinces, we come to the
viceregal capital, as Canton deserves to be called, though the
viceroy actually resides in another city. The river is alive with
steamboats, large and small, mostly under the British flag; but
native craft of the old style have not yet been put to flight.
Propelled by sail or oar, the latter creep along the shore; and at
Pagoda Anchorage near the city they form a floating town in which
families are born and die without ever having a home on _terra
firma_.
Big-footed women are seen earning an honest living by plying the
oar, or swinging on the scull-beam with babies strapped on their
backs. One may notice also the so-called "flower-boats," embellished
like the palaces of water fairies. Moored in one locality, they
are a well-known resort of the vicious. In the fields are
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the tillers of the soil wading barefoot and bareheaded in mud and
water, holding plough or harrow drawn by an amphibious creature
called a carabao or water-buffalo, burying by hand in the mire
the roots of young rice plants, or applying as a fertiliser the
ordure and garbage of the city. Such unpoetic toils never could
have inspired the georgic muse of Vergil or Thomson.
The most picturesque structure that strikes the eye as one approaches
the city is a Christian college--showing how times have changed.
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