adorned with red cloth. These scales are used for weighing the silver-coin bars and fragments of the precious metal, which form part of the currency of the place. When goods are sold by weight, the customer invariably brings his own balance, so as to secure his fair and just portion of the article he has come to buy. This balance is not unlike an ordinary yard measuring- rod, furnished with a sliding weight. It is a simple appli- cation of the lever. But the tendency of this mechanical con- trivance is not calculated to elevate the Chinese in our estima- tion; it proves a universal lack of confidence, which finds its way down to the lowest details of petty trade, for which the governing classes may take to themselves credit. The people are in this, as in many other matters, a law unto themselves. A ceaseless struggle against unfair dealing has therefore, like other native institutions, become a stereotyped necessity.
It is by no means pleasant to be caught in one of these narrow streets during a shower, as the water pours down in torrents from the roofs and floods the pavement, until it subsides through the soil beneath. The broadest streets are narrow, and shaded above in some places with screens of matting to keep out the sun. So close indeed, are the roofs to each other in the Chinese city, that, viewed from a distance, they look like one uninterrupted covering — a space entirely tiled over, beneath which the citizens sedulously conceal themselves until the cool of the evening, when weary of the darkness and of the trade and strife of the day, they swarm on the housetops to gamble, or smoke, or sip their tea until the shades of night fall, then they retire again to the lower regions to sleep on the cool benches of their shops. Canton boasts no system of drainage, no water supply save the river, no gas works, and no system of street lighting.
