"One good thing about going on a shopping excursion in Canton is that most of the establishments for the sale of different articles are grouped together, just as they are said to be in the bazaars of Cairo and Damascus. Thus we find most of the silk-dealers in Silk Street, those who sell mirrors and similar work are in Looking-glass Street, and the workers in ivory are in a street by themselves. Then there is Curiosity Street (or Curio Street, as it is generally called), where you can buy all sorts of odds and ends of things, old and new, which come under the head of Chinese curiosities. Lacquered ware and porcelain have their especial quarters; and so when you are in the region of any particular trade, you do not have to walk about much to make your purchases. In the vicinity of the river there are several large concerns where they have a general assortment of goods, and you may buy lacquer and porcelain, silk and ivory, and nearly everything else that is produced in Canton, under one roof. "We have already described lacquer and cloisonné work in writing from Japan. The Chinese productions in the same line are so much like the Japanese that a description of one will do for the other. Some of the shapes are different, and it is not difficult, after a little practice, to distinguish the Chinese from the Japanese; but the modes of working are essentially the same. All things considered, we like the Japanese lacquer better than the Chinese, as it has more variety, and the Japanese seem to be more cunning than the Canton people in making those bewildering little boxes with secret drawers and nooks and a great variety of shapes. But when it comes to ivory carvings, we have something else to say. "You can hardly have dreamed of the beautiful things we found in Canton cut out of ivory. There were combs and brooches so delicate that it seemed as if they could be blown to pieces by a breath; and there were boxes and card-cases with representations of landscapes, and men and animals on them so small that we needed a microscope to see them distinctly. In one shop we saw the whole tusk of an elephant carved from one end to the other so closely that you could hardly put a pin on it without hitting some part of the work. They told us that the tusk had been sent there by the gentleman who killed the elephant in India, and he was having it carved to keep as a trophy. The carving had cost six hundred dollars; and if it had been done in America, it would have cost nearer six thousand. Skilled labor is cheap in China, just as unskilled labor is, and it is astonishing for how little a man can be employed on the kind of work that would bring a high price in Europe or America.