File:BOAT GIRLS.jpg

English: John Thomson: THESE are the two daughters of a respectable boating family. They have been trained to the use of the oar, and the management of boats, from earliest childhood. Happy for them they are not slaves, purchased by some designing dame, and destined for a worse fate than the life of careful industry common to the labouring poor of Canton.

The hat worn by the elder sister is made of ratan, closely woven, and varnished so as to render it waterproof; it affords protection from the sun as well as the rain, and serves, indeed, all the purposes of an umbrella. It has, too, this advantage, that, while it shelters the body, it gives the wearer the free use of her arms.

Hundreds of the small passenger boats that ply for hire about the wharves of Canton, are managed by young girls, whose pride it is to keep them bright and attractive-looking. Each boat has a small cabin, open in front, having its fluor covered with white matting, a broad, raised seat, covered with like material, on which the passenger will find a tobacco pipe, spills, and the apparatus for procuring a light. The walls of the little cabin are adorned with pictures and small mirrors. The girls propel the boat from behind, and are separated from the passenger by a partition of wood, or bulkhead. Viewed from without, the boat has an equally attractive appearance, every board of the deck has been scoured with sand, until it rivals in whiteness the matting within, while a stand fixed on the bamboo roof of the cabin supports a little garden of favourite flowers. The girls, dressed with modest simplicity, deck their glossy black hair with some bright-coloured flower that heightens the effect of their dark eyes, and olive skins,