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Article A VISIT TO CANTON. Page 1 of 14 →
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A Visit To Canton.
A VISIT TO CANTON .
BY A FRENCH NAVAL OFFICER . '
OUR impatience to see Canton was so great , that the very day after our arrival at the anchorage of Wampoa , tho roadstead of Canton , and at a most inconvenient distance from the city , we hastened on board the steamer which plied twice a day between Wampoa and Canton . As we rapidly ascended the riverour attention was incessantly attracted
, , from one shore to the other , by the verdant rice-fields which stretch along the sloping banks , villages peeping between hedges of bamboos , temples half-concealed beneath the branches of the banyans , and towers in the distance , with their roofs vising one upon another , and their galleries of many angles . Every object indicated the approach to a large city , and
important centre of population . We at length reached the barrier , which , during the war in 1840 , was thrown across the mouth of the river ; and hardly had we passed this , and the forts which defend it , when the red masts of the mandarins' boats , and the first houses of the faubourgs , built upon piles , and , as it were ,
suspended over the river , the massive squadrons of junks ranged side by side , their white pennants floating in the breeze , with the increasing swarm of tonkas ( small boats , nearly as wide as they are long , and rowed by women ) , told us that we were a ] Dproaching the harbour . Canton , indeed , soon presented itself to our view—no longer buried within her
massive walls , which , surrounding the Tartar city , had hitherto only allowed us a sight of the ridges of piled-up roofs—no longer stretching out in the mud upon the oft-inundated banks of the Chou-Kiang ,- —but the city we had pictured to our imagination , such as the Chinese artists are fond of representing this Venice of the Celestial Empire . In the
background rose the imposing buildings of the European factories , the flag-poles of the different consuls , and the proudly displayed colours of England , Denmark , and the United States . There lay the city of a hundred thousand boats , the floating
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
A Visit To Canton.
A VISIT TO CANTON .
BY A FRENCH NAVAL OFFICER . '
OUR impatience to see Canton was so great , that the very day after our arrival at the anchorage of Wampoa , tho roadstead of Canton , and at a most inconvenient distance from the city , we hastened on board the steamer which plied twice a day between Wampoa and Canton . As we rapidly ascended the riverour attention was incessantly attracted
, , from one shore to the other , by the verdant rice-fields which stretch along the sloping banks , villages peeping between hedges of bamboos , temples half-concealed beneath the branches of the banyans , and towers in the distance , with their roofs vising one upon another , and their galleries of many angles . Every object indicated the approach to a large city , and
important centre of population . We at length reached the barrier , which , during the war in 1840 , was thrown across the mouth of the river ; and hardly had we passed this , and the forts which defend it , when the red masts of the mandarins' boats , and the first houses of the faubourgs , built upon piles , and , as it were ,
suspended over the river , the massive squadrons of junks ranged side by side , their white pennants floating in the breeze , with the increasing swarm of tonkas ( small boats , nearly as wide as they are long , and rowed by women ) , told us that we were a ] Dproaching the harbour . Canton , indeed , soon presented itself to our view—no longer buried within her
massive walls , which , surrounding the Tartar city , had hitherto only allowed us a sight of the ridges of piled-up roofs—no longer stretching out in the mud upon the oft-inundated banks of the Chou-Kiang ,- —but the city we had pictured to our imagination , such as the Chinese artists are fond of representing this Venice of the Celestial Empire . In the
background rose the imposing buildings of the European factories , the flag-poles of the different consuls , and the proudly displayed colours of England , Denmark , and the United States . There lay the city of a hundred thousand boats , the floating