Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1894 — ONE OF CHINA’S CITIES. [ARTICLE]

ONE OF CHINA’S CITIES.

Canton, Where the Plague Conies From, and It Isn’t Surprising. A line or two from Mrs. Archibald Dunn’s new book gives a striking picture of the horrors of life in Canton. “The circumference of the city walls measures from six to seven miles, and within their enclosure there exist $1,000,000 dn’nese people. I had been in many oriental cities and smelt many oriental smells, but those of Canton,” says Mrs. Dunn, “were giants of them all. The passage-like streets are open sewers, every description of refuse being cast into them and forming continuous heaps on either side of the way. The water supply is raised from wells in the streets, the mouths of which are on a level with the ground, and a shower of rain, or drippings from the buckets in which they lift it must carry back the surrounding filth in a way horrible to think of. Through miles and miles of these high, narrow alleys did we travel, through the most fetid, airless atmosphere that human lungs could cope with, through the most evil and' noisome odors that could assail human nostrils, past the . most loathsome sights in the shape of abnormal butcher meat —such as dogs Knd cats, skrmred and dressed ready for , copking; rats, both dried and. hanging alive by...tha. tailstlrogs. and unnatural-looking fish in tubsof water. a”ye, and awaiting death and Consumption.