No inconsiderable part of the multitude which composes the population of Canton lives in boats. There are officers appointed by government to regulate and control this portion of the city’s inhabitants. Every boat, of all the various sizes and descriptions that are seen here, is registered; and it appears that the whole number on the river, adjacent to the city, is eighty-four thousand. A great majority of these are tankea (egg-house) boats, called by some, sampans; these are generally not more than twelve or fifteen feet long, about six broad, and so low that a person can scarcely stand up in them: their covering, made of bamboo, is very light, and can be easily adjusted to the state of the weather. Whole families live in these boats, and in coops lashed on the outside of them they often rear large broods of ducks and chickens, designed to supply the city-markets. Passage-boats which daily move to and from the city-hamlets, ferry-boats which are constantly crossing and recrossing the river, huge canal-boats, laden with produce from the country, cruisers, pleasure-boats, &c. complete the list of these floating habitations, and present to the stranger a very interesting scene. [Sidenote: POPULATION.] There has been considerable diversity of opinion in relation to the population of Canton. The division of the city which brings a part of it into Nan-hae, and a part into Pwang-yu, precludes the possibility of ascertaining the exact amount of population. The facts which we have brought into view in the preceding pages, perhaps will afford the best data for making an accurate estimate of the number of inhabitants in the city. There are, we have already seen, fifty thousand persons engaged in the manufacture of cloth, seven thousand, three hundred barbers, and four thousand, two hundred shoemakers; but these three occupations employing sixty-one thousand, five hundred individuals, do not, probably, include more than one fourth of the craftsmen in the city; allowing this to be the fact, the whole number of mechanics will amount to two hundred and forty-six thousand; these, we suppose, are a fourth part of the whole population, exclusive of those who live on the rivers. In each of the eighty-four thousand boats, there are not less, on an average, than three individuals; making a total of two hundred and forty-two thousand; if to them we add two hundred and forty-six thousand, (which is the number of mechanics,) the amount will be one million, two hundred and thirty-six thousand, as the probable number of inhabitants in Canton. This number may possibly be incorrect; no one, however, who has had an opportunity of passing through the streets of the city, and viewing the multitudes that throng them, will think the estimate below one million.