ONE:"But the great sights of Canton we have not yet mentioned. These are the streets, and they are by all odds the finest we have seen in the country. They are very narrow, few of them being more than six or eight feet wide, and some of them less than the former figure. Not a single wheeled carriage can move in all Canton, and the only mode of locomotion is by means of sedan-chairs. We had chairs every day with four bearers to each, and it was strange to see how fast the men would walk in the dense crowds without hitting any one. They kept calling out that they were coming, and somehow a way was always made for them. Several times, when we met other chairs, it was no easy matter to get by, and once we turned into a side street to allow a mandarin's chair to pass along. We did knock down some things from the fronts of stores, and several times the tops of our chairs hit against the perpendicular sign-boards that hung from the buildings. There are great numbers of signs, all of them perpendicular, and they are painted in very gaudy colors, so that the effect is brilliant. Sometimes, as you look ahead, the space between the two sides of the street is quite filled with these signs, so that you cannot see anything else.There was no time for speech. The shot was not a signal, yet on the instant and in our very teeth, on our right and our left, the cross-fire of the hidden and waiting foe flashed and pealed, and left and right, a life for a life, our carbines answered from the saddle. For a moment the odds against us were awful. In an instant the road was so full of fallen horses and dismounted men that the jaded column faltered in confusion. Our cunning enemy, seeing us charge in column, had swung the two extremes of their line forward and inward. So, crouching and firing upon us mounted, each half could fire toward the other with impunity, and what bullets missed their mark buzzed and whined about our ears and pecked the top rails of either fence like hail on a window. A wounded horse drove mine back upon his haunches and caused him to plant a hoof full on the breast of one of our Louisianians stretched dead on his back as though he had lain there for an hour. Another man, pale, dazed, unhurt, stood on the ground, unaware that he was under point-blank fire, holding by the bits his beautiful horse, that pawed the earth majestically and at every second or third breath blew from his flapping nostrils a cloud of scarlet spray. They blocked up half the road. As we swerved round them the horse of the company's first lieutenant slid forward and downward with knees and nose in the dust, hurling his rider into a lock of the fence, and the rider rose and rushed to the road again barely in time to catch a glittering form that dropped rein and sword and reeled backward from the saddle. It was his captain, shot through the breast. An instant later our tangled column parted to right and left, dashed into the locks of the two fences, sprang to the ground, and began to repay the enemy in the coin of their own issue. Only a dozen or so did otherwise, and it was my luck to be one of these. Espying Ned Ferry at the very front, in the road, standing in his stirrups and shouting back for followers to carry the charge on through, we spurred toward him and he turned and led. Then what was my next fortune but to see, astride of my stolen horse, the towering leader of the foe, Captain Jewett.
TWO:Of course many of the locusts fell on the deck of the steamer, and found their way to the cabins. The flight of the cloud was from south to north, and Frank observed a remarkable peculiarity about the movements of individual members of the immense swarm. He captured several and placed them on the cabin table. No matter in what direction he turned their heads, they immediately faced about towards the north, and as long as they were in the cabin they continued to try to escape on the northern side. After the boat had passed through the swarm, the boys released several of the captives, and found that, no matter how they were directed at the moment of their release, they immediately turned and flew away to the north.As I passed up the road through the midst of our nearly tentless camp I met a leather-curtained spring-wagon to which were attached a pair of little striped-legged mules driven by an old negro. Behind him, among the curtains, sat a lady and her black maid. The mistress was of strikingly graceful figure, in a most tasteful gown and broad Leghorn hat. Her small hands were daintily gloved. The mules stopped, and through her light veil I saw that she was handsome. Her eyes, full of thought, were blue, and yet were so spirited they might as well have been black, as her hair was. She, or fate for her, had crowded thirty years of life into twenty-five of time.
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