3-074-556 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches in Canton, 1883. Engravings after drawings by Captain S. P. Oliver, Royal Artillery, '...taken above twenty years ago, at the time of the Anglo-French war with China...[showing] the Canton River, with the native junks and barges, and with a tall pagoda on the distant bank ; the stern old city walls and bastions, whose crumbling masonry could not long resist the effect of modern artillery; S. E. Angle of Walls; Canton from the S. E. Wall: the interior canal, with its closely-built rows of houses and its lofty bridges; the five-storeyed pagoda, or temple, attached to a wealthy monastery of Chinese consecrated worshippers; the North Gate of the city, and the pavilions or private summer-houses of Puntinqua's garden...An intellectual conquest of China by Western ideas is far more likely to be witnessed, in the next half-century, than any military conquest, which, indeed, we believe to be impossible, as well as most undesirable for the welfare of mankind...Canton...has lost much of its former mercantile importance to Europeans; but its connection in old times with the lucrative trading monopoly of the East India Company, and the historical renown of British military successes here...still render it a place of considerable interest...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.