Canton Warehouses On The Pearl River, circa 1850

Canton Warehouses On The Pearl River, circa 1850

Showing the American, British, French and Danish flags over their respective factory houses, the Pearl River traffic bustles beneath the shore of Canton city’s edge. Foreign merchants and captains had to anchor off Whampoa, down the river, and travel by junk, sampan or other transport operated by the local mariners, using a wide variety of propulsion, as shown. No firearms, women and very few average crewmen were allowed to travel upriver to Canton.

Note the shoreline’s wealth of trees and foliage between the hongs and river, mostly planted in the 1840s by an American indemnity fund company. A second great Canton fire in 1856 destroyed most of this area, never to be fully rebuilt. At this point, there is even a Western church before the British factory, at the end of Hog’s Road, which was built in 1847. The largest sampan in the foreground has an intricately signed flag, which may well identify further clues about the artist, while others men do business onboard the Chinese ships and within the Western buildings.