hinese Canton. At the Shameen's one hotel, which charges the
modest rate of from four to eight dollars per day for very ordinary
service, I was told that conditions were "very uncertain" and that
nobody was allowed to enter the walled city after 9 P. M. without a
pass.

[Illustration: A WIDE STREET IN CANTON.]

A guide having thrust his services upon me before I could get off the
boat, we left the Shameen, crossed one of the bridges and plunged into
the network of streets where, without a guide, a stranger would be lost
in a few minutes.

In a few of the streets outside of the walled city rickishas are the
usual means of travel, but inside the walls most of the streets are too
narrow for rickishas to pass one another, and paving of large flagstones
is too rough for wheels, so that the sedan chair is the only means of
locomotion except one's own legs. My self-appointed guide said he would
get chairs for seven dollars per day ($3.00 in American money) but I
told him I expected to walk and that if he wanted to go with me he would
have to do likewise; he immediately professed to think that walking was
the only way to go, so we agreed to see the town afoot. After we had
walked pretty briskly for three or four hours he inquired meekly, "Can
you walk this way all day?" People in the tropics are not usually fond
of walking, but Ping Nam was "game" and made no further remarks about my
method of locomotion. Some of the less frequented streets where there
were no sun-screens overhead were very hot, but in the busy streets the
sun was almost excluded by bamboo screens and by the walls of the houses
on each side, so that the heat was not nearly so oppressive as might be
expected in so terribly congested a city. Many of these streets were so
narrow that a tall man could touch the houses on each side with
outstretched hands.

On each side were stores of all sorts with open fronts with gay signs
and with gayly colored goods on display, making a picture of wonderful
fascination and everchanging interest.

Although we wandered for hour after hour through a perfect wilderness of
such streets we saw not a single white person; it seemed as though I
were the only Caucasian among the more than a million Asiatics, though
this, of course, was not actually the case.

In the busier streets the crowds filled the space from wall to wall, so
that when a string of coolies came along, bearing burdens in the usual
manner from a stick over the sh