2-982-643 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches in China - Heads of the People - a sketch at the Rev. Mr. Huleatt's Rice Distribution at Canton, 1858. Engraving from a sketch '...received by the last Overland Mail from our Special Artist and Correspondent in China, who, in a letter dated Canton, Oct. 28, writes: "The rice distribution is still carried on by the Rev. Mr. Huleatt on a reduced scale. Seven or eight hundred people three times a week receive a catty [kati - traditional Chinese unit of mass] of dry rice. That crowd contains within it the concentrated essence of human misery. Starving wretches are there - living skeletons. Other poor creatures crawl to the distribution on their hands and knees. And then the blind form the main body of the army of beggars. On the day I took the Sketch there were five hundred and ninety-nine of the blind alone".' From "Illustrated London News", 1858.