This principal temple is surrounded by numerous smaller sanctuaries, each decorated with images of deities, rudely wrought, but glowing with gilt and vivid colours.  Special reverence seems to be accorded to Kwanfootse, a demigod of War, and the four-and-twenty gods of Mercy.  These latter have four, six, and even eight arms.  In the Temple of Mercy Madame Pfeiffer met with an unpleasant adventure.  A Bonze had offered her and her companions a couple of wax tapers to light in honour of the god.  They were on the point of complying, as a matter of civility, when an American missionary, who made one of the party, snatched them roughly from their hands, and gave them back to the priests, protesting that such compliance was idolatrous.  The Bonze, in high indignation, closed the door, and summoned his brethren, who hurried in from all sides, and jostled and pushed and pressed, while using the most violent language.  It was not without difficulty they forced their way through the crowd, and escaped from the temple.

The guide next led the curiosity-hunters to the so-called House of the Sacred Swine.  The greatest attention is paid to these porcine treasures, and they reside in a spacious stone hall; but not the less is the atmosphere heavy with odours that are not exactly those of Araby the Blest.  Throughout their sluggish existence the swine are carefully fed and cherished, and no cruel knife cuts short the thread of their destiny.  At the time of Madame Pfeiffer’s visit only one pair were enjoying their otium cum dignitate, and the number rarely exceeds three pairs.

Peeping into the interior of a Bonze’s house, the company came upon an opium-smoker.  He lay stretched upon a mat, with small tea-cups beside him, some fruit, a tiny lamp, and several miniature-headed pipes, from one of which he was inhaling the intoxicating smoke.  It is said that some of the Chinese opium-smokers consume as much as twenty or thirty grains daily.  This poor wretch was not wholly unconscious of the presence of visitors; and, laying by his pipe, he raised himself from the ground, and dragged his body to a chair.  With deadly pale face and fixed, staring eyes, he presented a miserable appearance.

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Our traveller also visited a pagoda,—­the Half-Way Pagoda; so called by the English because it is situated half-way between Canton and Whampoa.  On a small hillock, in the midst of vast tracts of rice, it raises its nine stories to a height of one hundred and seventy feet.  Though formerly of great repute, it is now deserted.  The interior has been stripped of statues and ornaments, and the floors having been removed, the visitor sees to the very summit.  Externally, each stage is indicated by a small balcony without railing, access being obtained by steep and narrow flights of stairs.  A picturesque effect is produced by these projections, as everybody knows who has examined a “willow-pattern” plate.  They are built of coloured bricks, which are laid in rows, with their points jutting obliquely outwards, and faced with variegated tiles.