IN THE FAR EAST. lII. —CANTON (Continued).

SOMETHING ABOUT THIS OLD CITY AND ITS HISTORY. A NEW ZEALANDER % S NOTES BY THE WAY.

■• By H. Pemble. Waikaka.

(For the Witness.)

The great universities of England, America, or .Germany have no counterparts in China, but in Canton annual examinations ao held which enable th© successful students to enter — The Great Hamlin College. — Sometimes' there are from 10,000 to 12,000 students, 'and each student is given a little den- about sft x sft, in which he has *to reside_during the examinations. Theso , examinations are held once eveay three or ! -four years, and from the successful students arc, later or, drawn the governing class -of the Empire. 1 Anyone visiting Canton should not mix too many Chinese dishes or go into too many Chinese cbokshops he has ■visited 1 — The Chinese' Market in Canton. — i It will well repay a visit, and a most morning may be passed in examining the living things that go to make up the everyday iood of the Cantonese, lmcks and geese and fowls he will see by the thousand ; fish by the boat load, dogs and cats and rats, and bird-nests iroin Java, and beche de mer from the Floris Sea, will meet "the- new chum almost at every stall. Such a mixture of bug 6 and slugs and slimy things as would send a - Frenchman crazy with delight he will be called upon to examine as will satisfy^ him foE» the rest of his life unless he is a glutton. I From White Cloud Mountain, just at the rear of Canton, a fine view of the city and the great river may be obtained. The city and the villages and the river, the liou&es' „of the poor, and the , villas and beautiful grounds, of the rich alike lay spread out at one's feet. ,The bare hills around. Canton, "whereon the British troops w.ere stationed "in 1841 after the destruction' of "the forts, still look down on th£ old city. ' The round sugar-loafed hills of Singapore find their companions here. The granite hills around Canton are certainly -much -like -the round and flattopped^iderite ones to be seen on the island . of The town of Wampoa and island, I>utch and- French "folly" and English "play ground" may all be located. The beautiful suburbs of the. concession, ~the waving bamboos, the parks and lovely trees but serve to remind one of the difference of to-day and that past epoch in 1857, when, as Mr Oliphant says, "We continue to hunt them down in cneeks and burn their villages." The scene is " peaceful to-day, and the toiling thousands ' "are one and all struggling to get hold j of the white man's gold. 1 There are heaps of things to see in and around Canton that' in the space of a ' newspaper article cannot even h* men- [ tioned. . -The industries of Canton are extending, and business is rapidly on the -increase. ' With the industry of the Chinese and the wonderful system of cultivation to be seen in -whatever direction one may look, we ask ourselves, Can it b,? other- j wise? You may see the industrious "chow" carrying water and doing garden- [ ing work away out back in Utah, in the ' 6un-burnt valleys of Nevada, or in the j far west of Queensland, but it is* here in '• his- native -land, along the great valley of { the Pearl, that you realise something of "the real agricultural and horticultural skill of the Chine&e. Thousands of years of 1 industry, thousands of years of hard-bought ' experience, and untold years of grinding, soul-crushing, domestic and governmental , tyranny have assisted to evolv.e the Chi- 1 uese of to-day — a wonder among the people of the world. ! The great trading nations of tie world j do an enormous trade, with Canton. It is the outlet for a vast tract of splendid country extending east, north, and west, j There is not a great deal of railway work j done, and one or two short lines are all , that are running, but the whole Chinese j railway policy, exploited and practically j forced upon the Government during the , last few years, has really not begun, for , the concessionaries are afraid that the Chinese may-not carry out the terms forced . nnon them. A lir.e is to be constructed from | Kowloon to Canton, ond, wh,en finished, it must surely prove of great service to the merchants of Hongkong and Canton. Another line is proposed to run over the 3'Cei-ling Range, down by way of Lake Kiang. through the Yang-tse, and on to Peking. This is to be called the Great Northern line, and the concession to construct it was obtained by a French amr English company. Another line is to run west along the valley of the Pearl, and reach away into the western uplands, bordering on Burmah. When all th"s lines at present- proposed are constructed, a vast and rapid development of the resources of tbe country must take place. — The Chinese the Masters ; the Europeans Simply Agents.— « Though the foreigners _ may " build fine houses, ride. in smart rickshaws, live rwell, and do little for the rich living they are making, still a large number of the old stagers will tell you, "We are really tonly agents here now. The Chinamen are the real merchants !" The plain facts that 1 only a long business life can teach are , slowly but .surely being learned by ' foreigners in the East. Englishmen, Germans, Americans, French, and the subjects of other nations are learning by most, expensive experience that if they wish to do busir.°ss with the people of the Far East they will have to learn their language. ;

The great business houses — the foreign houses — are largely in the hands of ag.ents and interpreters, who are the go-betweens. The Chinese exporter and the great Chinese manufacturers, are doing here what they have done in Hongkong and in Singapore — viz., turning the white man into a mere hack. And money is accumulating in China: of that there is no doubt. The great Canton Banking Company and other large corporations have command of enormous capital. The gold that' has been pouring into China during the last 50 years from Australia, from New Zealand, from America, and South Africa is slowly but surely getting into circulation. That is how it is that the Chinese merchants and manufacturers are slowly turning round on the pushful foreigner, and are -exploiting him tor all he is worth ! No one need be under any doubt on that point. Not only are the Chinese controlling their own exports, but they are beginning to reach out after the control of the shipping. The Chinese merchant or business man is bringing the same industry, the same patience, the same shrewdness to bear' upon his affairs as the patient fisherman who has trained the cormorant to fish for him. In other words, the foreigner is in much the same position as the fishing cormorant wdth the brass ring round its neck. All the trade that Ttb. Q foreigner does with the Chinese is compelled to pay a very high commission because of the brass ring, — The Language Question, — that is ever round his neck. The foreigner may be a good fisherman, but it is only too" true that the Chinese is an adept at unhooking the fish. If the foreigner is lucky enough to secur.e a bite and haul his fish "to the surface, he will find the smiling Chinese ever ready to have first, pull on the catch. When one reads over the pages of Eastern and Western history and tries to take hold' of the motives of trade, the advantage of commerce, the principles =of international exchange, and the why and wherefore of our present-da3 T struggle for wealth, the unpleasant apparition that is rising in the East is certain to step into the arena. What if the Wc&l are driven back from* the East, not by shot and shell, not by the force of death-dealing weapons, but by that soulenslaving competition only realised by those who have livejl in lands -where men and women are weeds, as they are in the East? *