So poor are these sampan dwellers, and so greatly is the supply of their labor in excess of the demand for it, that they struggle with one another for the chance of making even a single "cash," which is valued at one-tenth of a penny. In the present instance scores of sampans, propelled by sweeps or sculling-oars, were racing towards the Fatshan, their occupants screaming, gesticulating, firing off crackers, and beating gongs to attract the attention of her passengers. All these craft looked exactly alike, and were about twenty-five feet long by eight feet wide. Each had a small, open deck forward, on which a man, standing and facing the bow, rowed with a pair of sweeps. There was an arch-roofed house amidships, and aft of it a covered deck occupied by a woman, who worked a long sculling-oar, by means of which she both steered and propelled the light craft. Not one of these boats was painted, but all were colored alike with pungent smelling Ning-Po varnish.
From every sampan peered round-faced, solemn-eyed children, boys and girls, all wearing pig-tails and dressed alike, and looking alike, except that the smaller boys generally had bladders, squares of cork, or billets of a light wood fastened to their shoulders to keep them afloat in case they fell overboard. The girls were held to be of so much less value that for them life-preservers were not thought of. Whenever these children were more than four or five years old they helped, or attempted to help, their parents with the oars, while those of younger age took care of the babies.
In the rush towards the steamer of these queer-looking and queerly manned craft they were in constant collision, smashing recklessly together, apparently striving to overturn one another, or to push their rivals out of the way. If one succeeded in making fast, others would hold on to her until the single grass-plaited rope would break, and all would be swept astern in the swift current, their crews screaming and shaking fists at one another as they went.
It was bedlam and babel, sea-fights and water-sports, commercial rivalry and insanity, all mixed into one grand helter-skelter of confusion; and yet, so far as the interested spectators could note, no one was drowned, nor even hurt, though, apparently, no one would have cared a snap if every one else had come to serious grief.
The Chinese passengers from the lower deck of the Fatshan swarmed into such sampans as succeeded in making fast, their queer-looking luggage, done up in matting, was pitched after them, and away they went as though each second was too precious to be wasted. Such of the foreign passengers as were tourists or globe-trotters, visiting Canton out of curiosity, were engaging guides to show them the sights of the wonderful city, and arranging for sedan-chairs, in which they were to be borne on the shoulders of coolies through its endless miles of swarming streets.
There are no wheeled vehicles in these granite-paved thoroughfares, and no beasts of burden, for the broadest and most important street of Canton is but eight feet wide, while in most of them a tall man standing in the middle may touch the houses on either side with his extended finger-tips. From these threadlike passages, packed with blue-clad, yellow-visaged humanity, and reeking with filth, open the narrow portals of shops whose contents would dazzle an Aladdin. Each dim doorway is barred against the entrance by a tiny altar, from which ascends, never-endingly, the incense of smouldering joss-sticks; but once the uninviting entrance has been passed, the visitor finds himself in another world.
The interior is scrupulously clean, and its perfumed atmosphere is that of quiet elegance. He is met by smiling attendants clad in silken garments and shod with noiseless felt, who bow profoundly before him, at the same time cordially shaking their own hands in token of welcome. They invite him to be seated in wonderfully carved chairs, lined with silken cushions, and darkly lustrous with the polish of ages. Tiny tables of marvellous inlay are set before him, and from them he is invited to drink of amber-colored tea served in egg-shell porcelain. Afterwards the hidden wealth of the establishment is brought forth, piece by piece, for his inspection, and it is intimated that these things are for sale, though he never is urged to purchase.
Or he is conducted from room to room, lighted from interior courts and filled with the most exquisite specimens of human handiwork known to the world. Here are silk embroideries of a beauty, delicacy, and texture not found elsewhere, exquisitely carved ivories, startling designs, boldly executed in lacquer, gold, and silver, jade, crystal, and precious stones. Here are feather-work and brass-work, priceless porcelains and cloisonné, softest crêpes and gossamer linens, black wood furniture graved with the painstaking skill that workmen of the Western world bestow only upon precious metals. All these things, and an infinity of others equally desirable, are passed in slow succession by the deft-handed attendants before the fascinated gaze of the foreign visitor, until he longs for the wealth of a Cr[oe]sus, and is only withheld from purchasing to the full extent of his means by memory of the grim customs officials who so surely await his homecoming.
From these places where things are sold the sightseer in Canton is borne away to places where things are made, or to temples, pagodas, and execution grounds. Perhaps he is permitted to enter the yamen of some wealthy mandarin, and, merely by passing through an enclosing wall of buildings, finds himself transferred in a minute from the filth and squalor of the narrow street, with its swarms of jargon-yelling coolies and leprous beggars, dimly filtered light and overpowering smells, into a place of sunlight and clean air, a fairy-land of trees and flowers, of singing birds, shaded walks, and plashing waters, of quiet and coolness, strangely attractive architecture—a place of gratified senses and restful luxury.
But none of these things was for Rob Hinckley—at least, not on this occasion, for instead of being a sensation-seeking tourist he merely was a sorrow-stricken lad, friendless in a great, pitiless city, well-nigh penniless, and desperately uncertain which way to move. He turned sick with apprehension as he gazed from one side of the steamer to the bund, or landing-place, where gangs of half-naked coolies grunted and sweated under their burdens of freight, or from the other to the yelling sampan crews ready to fight for a cent's worth of patronage. To him they resembled the myriad occupants of a gigantic ant-hill, and appeared equally lacking in human sympathies.