ABSTRACT
A description of Canton would not fail to be interesting, for it is one of the most densely-populated places in the world. Sir John Francis Davis, Robert Fortune, and other authors consulted by Anne Bowman and William Dalton in the 1850s all wrote about Canton. By the 1880s, this important treaty port had become so familiar to the British that Edwin Harcourt Burrage, author of Daring Ching, or, the Mysterious Cruise of the Swallow, felt justified in not providing a 'full description' of it because 'all the quaintness that distinguishes it throughout, have been written of again and again'. Like the classic detective who arrives at the crime scene to collect evidence and interview witnesses and suspects before formulating a hypothesis, Ching-Ching travels to Tancroft to examine the English country estate and questions some old men who provide 'a great deal of useful information about the servants at Rockmount Castle'.
