[Illustration: CITY OF BOATS, CANTON, WHERE GENERATIONS ARE BORN AND DIE] Between purchases, you are taken to see innumerable temples and other objects of interest, as they fall in your path. The Temple of the Five Hundred Genii is made amusing by the scion of the house of Ah Cum explaining that a figure sculptured with hat of European pattern is "Joss Pau Low." As a reader you are aware that it is the effigy of Marco Polo, the intrepid Italian traveler supposed to have been the first European to have penetrated ancient China. The water-clock, elsewhere, is found to be out of order and not running, and you assume that the water of the Pearl River is too muddy for delicate mechanisms. The execution ground is found to be merely a quadrilateral of vacant land, employed by native potters when not required by the State when a group of criminals is to be officially put to death. The guide is regretful that your visit is a few days too late for you to see five men beheaded in as many minutes. Employing a chair-coolie as a lay figure, John manages to give a satisfactory description of the _modus operandi_ of a decapitation, and you let it go at that. A stalwart native is then introduced as the official headsman, and this functionary promptly tries to sell the heavy-bladed sword with which he says he struck off five heads earlier in the week. Probably three hundred malefactors are annually put to death on this spot, and it is said that the public executioner has been known to sell twice that number of swords in a year. Now and again a loaferish policeman is seen, nearly always leaning against a building or finding support from the angle of a deep-set door. Most of the police wear sandals and straw hats, and carry long batons and revolvers; but there is no sameness of apparel or armament among these guardians of the peace, attested by their wearing only a portion of their uniform at a time. The Cantonese believe their police are equipped and dressed in strict accord with the "finest" of a great city in America.