scrambling, falling, laughing, and following us the full length of
the street, which was made up of about twenty such boats on either
side. And none of these innocent little things at all realized the
fate in store for them. In one place we saw two very old women in
the front room. In another, a woman knelt before the idolatrous
shrine engaged in her devotions. At one point there was a very
large boat brilliantly fitted up for music, dancing, smoking
opium, and feasting. At the far end of the street was a
'kitchen-boat,' from which supplies of food, ready cooked,
could be bought. All the way along we saw little girls with the
unmistakable signs of their destiny upon them. Our interpreter
said the girls were usually made to stay upstairs during the day
time, but at night the whole place was illuminated and alive; then
they were brought down and to the front. Occasionally we would see
one of these huge house boats full of painted girls, floating down
the middle of the stream, for they move about from place to place
at will.

"At Canton, February 18th, 1894, we met and conversed with a
missionary lady who had just come from a station in the interior.
She had travelled from her station on a Chinese boat, which had
been chartered by her adopted son for his use going up, and for
hers coming down the river. When she was about to embark, she
required that the men should search the boat, and down below, in
the very bottom, were a lot of little girl