Page:Ports of the world - Canton (1920).djvu/41

CANTON and, in the resulting battle within the city, there were scenes enacted which, in comparison, make the atrocities in European wars appear as the frolicking of children. Over 100,000 Cantonese men, women, children, and smooth-faced babies—were massacred by the invading armies, and tradition relates that the screams of the victims as they fell before the swords and spears of the conquerors were as the sound of the winds shrieking through the passes of a mighty mountain, so many there were who abandoned their earthly bodies in the same moment.

While the walls around Canton remained in existence until some centuries after the city was stormed by the Manchus, it was never considered an adequate defense against determined and organized attack. In later years it was tolerated more for its picturesqueness and its usefulness against raids by pirates than for its value in case of a major onslaught.

Several years ago the greater portion of the Canton wall was razed and its foundation converted into boulevards, the action marking one of the striking features of present-day progress in China.

Here and there along the boulevards the traveler sees the crumbling ruins of gates and towers, with heaps of jagged rock showing above the surface of the earth to mark the location of the wide