After an all night run on the Pearl River,
dawn broke with our eyes fastened on this great Chinese city, Canton. Here years could be spent without learning a great deal about its historical calendar.
Entering through a gate of the old stone wall, we found the only European hotel in the city, the “Victoria,” where, after having had breakfast, we engaged two sedan chairs carried by coolies, and sought the places of interest. The streets are so narrow that two chairs can just barely pass each other. We visited the ancient pagodas, the execution ground and block where highbinders are beheaded, the markets, bazaars, and opium dens, and finally witnessed a Chinese wedding.
One of the interesting sights of the Pearl River is its floating population. It is estimated that three million Chinese live in junks on this river.
I was not at all reluctant to leave this relic of the dark ages for the more up-to-date city of Hong Kong. We know the nations of the earth are represented in our New York, but for real cosmopolitanism the “Queen’s Road” in Hong Kong makes old
Broadway look like a street in a country village.
The principal enterprises of Hong Kong are shipping, the manufacture of chinaware, silk goods, sedan wood-work, and pyrotechnics. Labor is very cheap, and, as British imports are entered free of duty, the living in this city of the far East is very cheap.
Many Hong Kong Chinamen are educated in the English language, have adopted the customs and manners of the English people, and for cleverness in business and practical affairs are unexcelled.
A tram-way leads up the mountain-side to the Peak Hotel, from which you can be conveyed in sedan chairs to the zenith of Victoria Peak. At the Peak Hotel I met two American prospectors, with whom I played several games of billiards; these men had spent three years in Sumatra and were awaiting a liner for “Frisco.” With them I visited Happy Valley, the Chinese Court, the Dairy Farm, Douglass Castle, Kennedy Road, the Chinese market, the Royal Naval Canteen, the barracks of the Welsh Fusileers, the Highlanders, the Scots Guards,
and the Sikhs, old Chinese joss houses, and the famous Traveller’s Inn, where British bar-maids do the honors.