For some distance our road lay through narrow streets or alleys paved with large flags.  In a small niche somewhere in the front of every house, we saw little altars from one to three feet high, before which, as it was yet early, the night lamps were still burning.  An immense quantity of oil is unnecessarily consumed in keeping up this religious custom.  The shops now began to be opened.  They resemble neat entrance halls, having no front wall.  The goods were exposed for sale either in large open boxes or on tables, behind which the shopkeepers sit and work.  In one corner of the shop, a narrow staircase leads up into the dwelling-house above.

Here, as in Turkish towns, the same regulation is observed of each trade or calling having its especial street, so that in one nothing but crockery and glass, in another silks, and so on, is to be seen.  In the physician’s street are situated all the apothecaries’ shops as well, as the two professions are united in one and the same person.  The provisions, which are very tastily arranged, have also their separate streets.  Between the houses are frequently small temples, not differing the least, however, in style from the surrounding buildings:  the gods, too, merely occupy the ground floor, the upper stories being inhabited by simple mortals.

The bustle in the streets was astonishing, especially in those set apart for the sale of provisions.  Women and girls of the lower classes went about making their purchases, just as in Europe.  They were all unveiled, and some of them waddled like geese, in consequence of their crippled feet, which, as I before observed, extends to all ranks.  The crowd was considerably increased by the number of porters, with large baskets of provisions on their shoulders, running along, and praising in a loud voice their stock in trade, or warning the people to make way for them.  At other times, the whole breadth of the street would be taken up, and the busy stream of human beings completely stopped by the litter of some rich or noble personage proceeding to his place of business.  But worse than all were the numerous porters we met at every step we took, carrying large baskets of unsavoury matter.

It is a well known fact, that there is perhaps no nation on the face of the earth equal to the Chinese in diligence and industry, or that profits by, and cultivates, as they do, every available inch of ground.  As, however, they have not much cattle, and consequently but little manure, they endeavour to supply the want of it by other means, and hence their great care of anything that can serve as a substitute.

All their small streets are built against the city walls, so that we had been going round them for some time before we were aware of the fact.  Mean-looking gates or wickets, which all foreigners are strictly prohibited from passing, and which are shut in the evening, lead into the interior of the town.

I was told that it has often happened for sailors, or other strangers, during their walks, to penetrate through one of these entrances into the interior of the town, and not discover their mistake until the stones began flying about their ears.