on a
short-legged pony, and guarded front and rear by forty wicked-looking
soldiers armed with carbines, has precedence so instantly accorded him
that the clients of Ah Cum's third son are almost precipitated sideways
into a row of shops. The mighty official passes without so much as
casting a glance of compliment at the women of the party, thereby making
it evident that Canton mandarins have a code of deportment peculiarly
their own.

The products of every section of Asia are said Canton, Unique City of
China to be heaped high in the warehouses of this great mart of Southern
China; but the tourist sees naught of these. What he views from his
sedan-chair is thousands of shops but little larger than catacomb cells,
wherein everything from straw sandals for street coolies to jade
bracelets for the richly endowed is offered for sale. Preserved from
theft and fire in Canton's godowns and pawnshops are stored enough
fabrics of silk, art-embroideries, and carvings in ivory and teakwood,
to cause a person of average taste to lose his mind, could they be
paraded for his benefit; and a collector would find it difficult to
preserve solvency, were the treasures of the shabby-looking warehouses
proffered for sale. Unusually repugnant are the stalls where food is
vended, for their wares are prepared in a manner making it easy for the
visitor to forget that he ever possessed an appetite. A hundred times as
you are borne through Canton's streets your chair escapes by only a few
feet or inches rows of cooked ducks and pigs that seem to have been
finally varnished to make them appeal to the native epicure. Here and
there you observe strange hunks of meat held together by a wisp of straw
that your guide tells you with immobile countenance are rat hams, and in
sundry shops your ready eye thereafter detects tiny dried carcasses that
can only be rats. Let it be said in fairness to the sights of Canton
that the display of vegetables is attractive enough to turn your
thoughts to the dietary benefits of vegetarianism.

You early perceive that Ah Cum John is many kinds of a "boss" by the way
he takes command of the shops at which he deigns to halt his caravan.
All are charmed with the jewelry fabricated by the workers in
kingfishers' feathers, and make liberal selections. But you are not
permitted to pay the merchant with whom you have made a bargain, for
John says, "You pay him nothing, you pay me to-night for
everything"--and the purchases