Page:Inside Canton.djvu/33

32 people must be, when it is considered that it was this fact which particularly struck me among so many objects which were new and strange to me.

The house Thè-ki-Han is built partly in the European and partly in the Chinese style: it consists of two storeys, and the roof, which forms a terrace, is paved with granite, which shines in the sun as if strewed with diamonds. On the ground floor are vast magazines, in which are piled up bales of silk, chests of tea, jars full of musk, in fact all the products which European civilisation borrows from the Celestial Empire. Our apartments were on the second floor: they looked on to the river. On our left we had the massive buildings of the factories, on which the colours of the great European nations waved; opposite, the left bank of the Tchou-kiang, covered with Chinese temples and houses, and the thousand streets of the floating town. It was one of those views which seem like the realisation of an opera fairy scene.

When we were installed, we went to visit the apartments prepared for the reception of M. de Lagrené. They consisted of seven rooms on the same floor. The bed-rooms and saloons were separated by lattice-work, formed of ivory and ebony, incrustated on hard wood in an indescribably fantastic manner. The bed-rooms were concealed from curiosity by silk hangings, fastened to the carved walls.