ls borne
in these luxurious vehicles are accompanied by lictors on horse or
foot. Bridegrooms and brides are allowed to pose for the nonce as
grandees; and the bridal chair, whose drapery blends the rainbow
and the butterfly, is heralded by a band of music, the blowing of
horns, and the clashing of cymbals. The block and jam thus occasioned
are such as no people except the patient Chinese would tolerate.
They bow to custom and smile at inconvenience. Of horse-cars or
carriages there are none except in new streets. Rickshaws and
wheelbarrows push their way in the narrowest alleys, and compete
with sedans for a share of the passenger traffic.

In those blue hills that hang like clouds on the verge of the horizon
and bear the poetical name of White Cloud, there are gardens that
combine in rich variety the fruits of both the torrid and the temperate
zones. Tea and silk are grown in many other
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parts of China; but here they are produced of a superior quality.

Enterprising and intelligent, the people of this province have
overflowed into the islands of the Pacific from Singapore to Honolulu.
Touching at Java in 1850, I found refreshments at the shop of a
Canton man who showed a manifest superiority to the natives of the
island. Is it not to be regretted that the Chinese are excluded
from the Philippines? Would not the future of that archipelago
be brighter if the shiftless native were replaced by the thrifty
Chinaman?

It was in Canton that American trade suffered most from the boycott
of 1905, because there the ill-treatment of Chinese in America was
most deeply felt, the Chinese in California being almost exclusively
from the province of Canton.

The viceroy of Canton has also the province of Kwangsi under his
jurisdiction. Mountainous and thinly peopled, it is regarded by
its associate as a burden, being in an almost chronic state of
rebellion and requiring large armies to keep its turbulent inhabitants
in order.

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CHAPTER III

PROVINCE OF FUKIEN

_Amoy--Bold Navigators--Foochow--Mountain of Kushan--The Bridge
of Ten Thousand Years_

Following the coast to the north some three hundred miles we come
to Amoy, the first important seaport in the adjacent province of
Fukien. The aspect of the country has undergone a change. Hills
attain the altitude of mountains, and the alluvial plains, so
conspicuous about Canton, become contracted to narrow valleys.

The people, too, are changed in sp