are carried away in his sumptuous
palanquin. Pictures executed on rice-paper are next acquired on the same
terms; then a cargo of daggers and swords with handles and scabbards
covered with shark skin is secured after a brief dicker. When you buy a
carved ivory ball representing years of labor by a genius, or a dozen
bolts of Chee-fu silk, the price of which may be several hundred Mexican
dollars, John insists that you are entitled to a _cumsha_ of value. The
merchant makes obeisance and proffers you a paper-cutter or a box of
candied ginger. John resents this parsimony and says "Not good enough."
He goes then behind the counter and pulls down a mandarin coat weighted
with embroidery, or maybe an intricately carved puff-box, saying "The
merchant gives you this with his compliments." Everything is dumped in
the gorgeous palanquin, and your spoliation dash through commercial
Canton is resumed.

[Illustration: CITY OF BOATS, CANTON, WHERE GENERATIONS ARE BORN AND
DIE]

Between purchases, you are taken to see innumerable temples and other
objects of interest, as they fall in your path. The Temple of the Five
Hundred Genii is made amusing by the scion of the house of Ah Cum
explaining that a figure sculptured with hat of European pattern is
"Joss Pau Low." As a reader you are aware that it is the effigy of Marco
Polo, the intrepid Italian traveler supposed to have been the first
European to have penetrated ancient China. The water-clock, elsewhere,
is found to be out of order and not running, and you assume that the
water of the Pearl River is too muddy for delicate mechanisms. The
execution ground is found to be merely a quadrilateral of vacant land,
employed by native potters when not required by the State when a group
of criminals is to be officially put to death.

The guide is regretful that your visit is a few days too late for you to
see five men beheaded in as many minutes. Employing a chair-coolie as a
lay figure, John manages to give a satisfactory description of the
_modus operandi_ of a decapitation, and you let it go at that. A
stalwart native is then introduced as the official headsman, and this
functionary promptly tries to sell the heavy-bladed sword with which he
says he struck off five heads earlier in the week. Probably three
hundred malefactors are annually put to death on this spot, and it is
said that the public executioner has been known to sell twice that
number of swords in a year. Now and again a