In another building that we passed I saw a curious ceremony, which Ah Cum explained as that of three Buddhist priests who were clearing a house of evil spirits. It appears that, two weeks before, a man had committed suicide on the premises, in order to avenge himself on the proprietor. For in China a man, instead of killing his enemy, sometimes kills himself, the motive being a desire that the hated one shall be regarded as responsible for his death, and be pursued by evil spirits here and in the world to come. To be annoyed by ghosts must be exceedingly unpleasant, but, on the whole, I hope that all my enemies will try the Chinese method.

Occasionally we discovered in these streets an itinerant barber. These Chinese Figaros carry their outfits with them. First in importance comes a bamboo pole, which is the immemorial
badge of their profession. To this is usually
attached one solitary towel,—free to every customer. From one extremity of this pole hangs a small brass basin, together with a charcoal stove for heating water; the other end is balanced by a wooden cabinet, which serves the patient as a seat during the operation, and contains razors, lancets, tweezers, files, and other surgical instruments.

It matters not where one of these tonsorial artists practises his surgery. A temple court, a flight of steps, a street, or a back-yard, are quite the same to him. He takes his queue where he can find it. One of his commonest duties is to braid that customary appendage to a Chinaman's head, without which he would be despised. It is comical to estimate the thousands of miles of Chinese queues which even one barber twists in the course of his career—enough, if tied together, end to end, to form a cable between Europe and America. Yet this singular style of hair-dressing (now so universal) was introduced into China only two hundred and fifty years ago. Before that time the Chinese wore full heads of hair, and the present fashion of shaved crowns and twisted queues is of Tartar origin, and was imposed by a conquering dynasty as a badge of servitude. The wearing of a mustache in China is an indication that he whose face it adorns is a grandfather. In fact, until he is forty-five years old, a Chinaman usually shaves his face completely; but this fact does not prove that after that time he can dispense with the services of a barber. For the tonsorial art in China is exceedingly varied; and Chinese barbers not only braid the queue; they also shave the eyebrows, clean the ears, pull teeth, and massage. Moreover, they scrape the inside of their victim's eye-lids—a custom which is believed by foreigners to be the cause of much of the ophthalmia in China.

Chinese fortune-tellers had for me a singular fascination. I found them everywhere—in temple courts, at gateways and beside the roads—invariably wearing spectacles, and usually seated at a table decorated with huge Chinese characters. Their services seemed to be in great demand. In every case the ceremony was the same. Each applicant in turn approached, and stated what he wished to know; for example, whether a certain day would be a lucky time for him to buy some real estate, or which of several girls his son would better marry. Upon the table stood a tin box full of bamboo sticks. One of these slips the customer drew at random, and from the sentence written on it the fortune-teller gave his answer in oracular words—which could, as usual, be interpreted in various ways.

At length, however, leaving for a time the shops and dimly-lighted alleys, we found ourselves approaching a huge gate. For Canton, like most other Chinese cities, is divided into certain districts, each of which is separated from the adjoining one by a wall. The gateways in these walls are always closed at night, and are of special use in case of fires or insurrections, since they are strong enough to hold in check a surging crowd till the police or soldiers can arrive.

Passing through this portal, we made our way along the wall until we arrived at a prominent point of observation, known as the Five-storied Pagoda. Whatever this may once have been, it is to-day a shabby, barn-like structure, marked here and there with traces of red paint, like daubs of rouge on a clown's face. All visitors to Canton, however, will recollect the building, with a certain amount of pleasure, as being the resting-place in which one eats the lunch brought from the steamer or hotel. Not that there is not food of certain kinds obtainable in Canton itself, but somehow what one sees of Chinese delicacies here does not inspire him with a desire to partake of them. In one of Canton's streets, for example, I entered a cat-restaurant. Before the door was a notice which Ah Cum translated thus: "Two fine black cats to-day, ready soon." On stepping inside, I heard some pussies mewing piteously in bamboo cages. Hardly had I entered when a poor old woman brought the proprietor some kittens for sale. He felt of them to test their plumpness, as we might weigh spring chickens. Only a small price was offered, as they were very thin, but the bargain was soon concluded, the woman took her money, and the cadaverous kittens went to swell the chorus in the cages. Black cats, by the way, cost more in China than cats of any other color, for the Chinese believe that the flesh of dark-coated felines makes good blood.

To some Chinamen, dogs fried in oil are also irresistible. In one untidy street, swarming with yellow-skinned humanity, we saw a kind of gipsy kettle hung over a wood fire. Within it was a stew of dog-meat. Upon a pole close by was hung a rump of uncooked dog, with the tail left on, to show the patrons of this open-air restaurant to what particular breed the animal had belonged. For it is said there is a great difference in the flesh of dogs. Bull-terriers, for example, would probably be considered tough. Around this kettle stood a group of coolies, each with a plate and spoon, devouring the canine stew as eagerly as travelers eat sandwiches at a railway restaurant after the warning bell has rung. Some hungry ones were looking on as wistfully as boys outside a bun-shop. One man had such a famished look that, through the medium of Ah Cum, I treated him at once. Moreover, hundreds of rats, dried and hung up by the tails, are exposed for sale in Canton streets, and shark's fins, antique duck eggs, and sea-slugs are considered delicacies.

We tried to bring back photographic proofs of all these horrors, but it was impossible. Whenever we halted in the narrow lanes, in fifteen seconds we would be encircled by a moving wall of hideous faces, whose foremost rank kept closing in on us until the atmosphere grew so oppressive that we gasped for breath and told our bearers to move on. Nor is this all. These crowds were sometimes positively hostile. A superstitious fear of being photographed by "foreign devils" made them dangerous. This fact was several times made disagreeably evident. Thus, in a garden adjoining a Chinese temple, I wished to photograph some sacred hogs which were attached to the sanctuary in some unknown capacity. But scarcely had the exposure been made, when a priest gave the alarm, and in three minutes a mob of men and boys were rushing toward us, uttering yells and throwing stones. Ah Cum himself turned pale. He sprang in front of us, and swore (may heaven forgive him!) that not a picture had been taken. Of course we offered money as indemnity, but the priests rejected it with scorn, claiming that by the pointing of the camera we had stopped the growth of the hogs. I do not think I exaggerate the situation when I say that if the politic Ah Cum had not been there to defend us, we should have suffered personal injury.

Standing up on the summit of the Five-storied Pagoda, we looked out over the city of Canton. For wide-spread, unrelieved monotony, I never saw the equal of that view in any place inhabited by human beings. True, the confusion of the foreground was to be excused, since a tornado had recently blown down many of the native houses. But far beyond this mass of ruins, stretching on and on for miles, was the same monotonous, commonplace vista of low, uninteresting buildings, seamed with mere crevices in lieu of streets. Meantime, from this vast area came to us a dull, persistent hum, like the escape of steam from a locomotive, reminding us that here were swarming nearly two million human beings, almost as difficult for a foreigner to distinguish or identify as ants in a gigantic ant-hill.

The exact population of Canton is hard to determine. The number arrived at depends upon where one leaves off counting the three hundred suburban villages, each of which seems a part of the city. Bishop Harper, who lived here for forty years, says, that if one should plant a stake in the centre of Canton, and count all around it within a radius of ten miles, one would find an aggregate of three-and-a-half million people. One village, for example, eleven miles away, noted for silk and other manufactures, is thought to contain eight hundred thousand inhabitants.

Out of this wilderness of mediocrity there rose in one place a pagoda, which by contrast seemed to possess prodigious height; but such objects are exceptional. To understand what Canton is like, one must picture to himself a city which, with its suburbs, is larger and more populous than Paris, yet has not one handsome avenue, one spacious square, or even one street that possesses the slightest claim to cleanliness or beauty. Worse than this, it is a city without a single Chinese building in its whole extent that can be even distantly compared in architectural elegance with thousands of imposing structures in any other city of the civilized world. "But are there no European edifices in Canton?" the reader may perhaps inquire. Yes, one, which makes the contrast only more apparent. It is the Roman Catholic cathedral, whose lofty towers are, strangely enough, the first objects in the city which the traveler sees in sailing up the river from Hong-Kong. This handsome Gothic structure, built entirely of granite, rising from such a sea of architectural ugliness, at once called forth our admiration. To the Chinese, however, these graceful towers are objects of the utmost hatred. It angers them to see this area, which French and English conquerors obtained by treaty, still occupied by a Christian church. So far, it has escaped destruction; but there are those who prophesy its doom and say that the time will come when not one stone of it will be left upon another.

There are, however, five or six other buildings in Canton, which rival the pagoda and the Catholic church in height. These hideous objects, which look like monstrous granite boxes set on end, are pawn-shops. One might conclude from their enormous size that half the personal property of the Cantonese was in pawn. They certainly are well patronized, for pawning clothes is such a common thing in China that hundreds of the Cantonese send here for safe-keeping their furs and overcoats in summer, and their thin summer clothes in winter, receiving money for them as from any pawn-broker. The Chinese mode of guarding these tall structures against thieves is certainly unique. Upon the roofs are piled stones to be dropped upon the heads of robbers, and also reservoirs of vitriol, with syringes to squirt the horrible acid on invaders.

Astonished at this lack of imposing architecture, we asked if there were no temples in Canton, Assuredly there were—eight hundred of them, all more or less defaced and incrusted with dirt. One of the oldest and most sacred is called the "Temple of Five Hundred Gods," because within its walls are seated five hundred life-size images of gilded wood, representing deified sages of the Buddhist faith. But they are all coarse specimens of sculpture, and many are amusing caricatures. In front of each is a small jar of ashes, in which the worshiper burns a stick of incense in honor of his favorite god. Offerings of money, too, are sometimes made—but not of genuine money. The Chinese are usually too practical to use anything but imitation money made of gilded paper. I do not know what the gods think of this Oriental style of dropping buttons in the contribution-box, but the priests do not like this sort of currency. They are all "hard money" men.

But, if we accept the ancient Proverb that "To labor is to pray," then are the Chinese devout indeed. Whatever other faults they may possess, idleness is not one of them. The struggle for existence keeps them active. Yet they live on almost nothing. A German merchant told me that one of his coolies, after twenty-five years of service, had recently had his salary raised to ten dollars a month. The laborer was, of course, delighted. "Now," he exclaimed, "I intend to marry another wife. For years I have longed to have two wives, but have never been able to afford it; but now, with ten dollars a month, I can indulge in luxuries!"

In strolling about among these Chinese coolies, I found that life in China is indeed reduced to its lowest terms. In some of the Canton shops, for example, I saw potatoes sold in halves and even in quarters, and poultry is offered, not only singly, but by the piece—so much for a leg, so much for a wing. Second-hand nails are sold in lots of half-a-dozen. A man can buy one-tenth of a cent's worth of fish or rice. I understood, at last, how Chinese laundrymen can go home from the United States after a few years' work, and live upon their incomes. When one perceives under what conditions these swarming myriads live, one naturally asks how pestilence can be averted. One source of safety is, no doubt, the universal custom of drinking only boiled water in the form of tea. If it were not for this, there would be inevitably a terrible mortality, for the coolies take no precautions against infection. A gentleman in the English consular service told us that he had seen two Canton women in adjoining boats, one washing in the river the bedclothes of her husband who had died of cholera, the other dipping up water in which to cook the family dinner!

If, perchance, these people should fall ill, I fear they would not be greatly benefited by any Chinese doctor whom they might employ. Chinese physicians are thought to be ignoramuses, unless they can diagnose a case by merely feeling the pulse. Hence, if they are called to attend a lady, they see of her usually nothing but her wrist, thrust out between the curtains of the bed. Those who prescribe for internal diseases are called "inside doctors," while others are "outside" men, just as some of our medicines are labeled "for external use only." A story is told of a man who had been shot through the arm with an arrow. He first applied to an "outside" doctor, who cut off the two ends of the weapon and put a plaster on each wound. "But," said the patient, "the remainder of the arrow is still in my arm." "Ah!" replied the "outside" doctor, "that is not my affair. To have that removed, you must go to an 'inside' man."

One day, in passing through a temple gate, a half-clad Chinaman offered me for sale a box of grasshoppers, which, when ground into a powder, make a popular remedy for some ailments. In fact, aside from ginseng and a few other well-known herbs, the medicines used in China seem almost incredible. A favorite cure for fever, for example, is a soup of scorpions. Dysentery is treated by running a needle through the tongue. The flesh of rats is supposed to make the hair grow. Dried lizards are recommended as a tonic for "that tired feeling," and iron filings are said to be a good astringent. Chinese physicians say that certain diseases are curable only by a decoction whose chief ingredient is a piece of flesh cut from the arm or thigh of the patient's son or daughter. To supply this flesh is thought to be one of the noblest proofs of filial devotion. This is not an exaggeration. In the Pekin Official Gazette of July 5, 1870, is an editorial, calling the emperor's attention to a young girl who had cut off two joints of her finger and dropped them into her mother's medicine. The mother recovered, and the governor of the province proposed to erect a monument in honor of the child.

In view of such a pharmacopœia, it is a comfort to learn that in the Chinese theology a special place in hell is assigned to ignorant physicians. All quacks are doomed to centuries of torture, the worst fate being reserved for doctors who abuse their professional skill for purposes of immorality. Their punishment is the cheerful one of being boiled in oil. Another curious, and not altogether absurd, custom of the Chinese is to pay a physician so long as they continue in health, but if they fall ill, the doctor's salary ceases until they recover, whereupon it commences again.

Chinese women seemed to me, as a rule, exceedingly plain, but, even were they Venuses, one of their characteristics would make my flesh creep. I refer to their claw-like finger-nails, which are so long that apparently they could be used with equal ease as paper-cutters or stilettoes. Gloves cannot possibly be worn upon these finger-spikes, so metal sheaths have been invented to protect them. To show what can be done in nail-growing, the following lengths were measured on the left hand of a Chinese belle: thumb nail, two inches; little finger nail, four inches; third finger, five and one-quarter inches. Under these circumstances we cannot wonder that in China it is not the custom to shake hands: otherwise, painful accidents might occur. Accordingly, the Chinese clasp their own hands and shake them gently at each other.

A still more repulsive peculiarity of Chinese women is their stunted feet, which for the purposes of locomotion are little better than hoofs. All Chinese ladies of the better class must have these "lily feet," as they are called. Sometimes a Chinaman will have two wives; the first an ornamental one with "lily feet," the second, a large-footed woman for business. The origin of this barbarous custom of preventing the growth of the foot is unknown. Perhaps it sprang from a sentiment which Ah Cum graphically expressed by saying:

"A small foot is much safer to live with. A big foot runs about too easily and gets into mischief. Moreover," he added, with a smile, "a big-footed woman sometimes kicks." One Chinaman assured me with great pride that his wife's foot was only two and a half inches long. There is a class of women here whose regular business it is to bind the feet of little girls when about six years of age. The process of repressing the natural growth of the foot lasts for seven years—the four smaller toes being bent under until they lose their articulations and become identified with the sole of the foot. When this has been accomplished, the second and severer operation commences—of bringing the great toe and the heel as nearly together as possible. The bandage is drawn tighter, month by month, until the base of the great toe is brought into contact with the heel, and the foot has become a shapeless lump. By this unnatural treatment the leg itself becomes deformed, and its bones are made not only smaller in diameter, but shorter. The circulation also is obstructed, and the large muscles are soon completely atrophied from disuse. The agony caused by such interference with nature can be only faintly imagined. It made the tears come to my eyes to hear a Chinese gentleman describe the methods taken to console his suffering children and help them forget their misery. The poor little creatures scream and moan from the incessant pain, and often lie across the bed with their legs pressed against the edge, in the hope that this will lessen their distress; but nothing can relieve them but freedom from the torturing bandage, which is never relaxed. It makes one sick at heart to think that such a custom has prevailed in China for more than a thousand years.

Should we approach a group of Chinese merchants in Canton, and ask any one of them "How many children have you?" we could be almost certain that he would not think of counting his daughters, or that he would at least make this distinction—"I have two children, and one girl." For to a Chinaman nothing in life is so important as to have a son to offer sacrifices for him after death and worship at his grave, since, in their opinion, a daughter is not capable of doing this. When a boy is born, therefore, the father is overwhelmed with congratulations, but if the newcomer be a girl, as little reference as possible is made to the misfortune. Friends are informed of the birth of a child by strips of paper carried through the street. If it be a boy, yellow paper is used, but in case of a girl any color will do. This feeling, intensified by poverty, is the cause of the infanticide which has been, and still is, in certain provinces, so dark a blot on the domestic history of China. It is said, for example, that in the vicinity of Amoy thirty per cent, of all new-born girls are strangled or drowned, as unwelcome kittens sometimes are with us.

On our second day in Canton we investigated another phase of Chinese life, in some respects stranger than anything we had thus far seen. Along the shores of the Canton river, and in its various canals, is a population of a quarter of a million souls, living on thousands of peculiar boats crowded together side by side, and forming streets, and even colonies, of floating dwellings. Moreover, these conditions prevail in every river-town throughout the empire.

Each of these "sampans," as they are called, though only about twenty feet in length, constitutes the home of an entire family. Eight people frequently live on one boat—grandpa and grandma, father and mother, uncle and aunt, two or three children, and a baby. The latter is tied to the back of its mother, even when she is rowing. As for the other children, their parents fasten around them pieces of bamboo, like life-preservers, and tie them to the rail by a cord. If they tumble over, they float until some one gets a chance to pull them in. Upon these little boats thousands are born, eat, drink, cook, and sleep, and finally die, having known no other home. Under the flooring are stored their cooking utensils, bedding, clothing, provisions, oil, charcoal, and other requisites of their aquatic life. Above them, usually, are movable roofs of bamboo wicker-work, to give protection from the sun and rain.

Some of these families even take boarders! I verified this by going at night among this floating population, and found that sleeping space on the boats is rented to those who have no fixed abode. Planks are laid over the seats to form a floor, and on these lie the numerous members of the household and the lodgers. Conspicuous figures in this boat-life are the itinerant barbers and physicians, who go about in tiny sampans, ringing a bell and offering their services.

Occasionally, however, we beheld a boat much larger and finer than the craft around it. It proved to be one of the Chinese flower-boats, which are the pleasure resorts of China's jeunesse dorée. By day they are conspicuous by their size and gilded wood-work, and in the evening by their many lights. Never, while memory lasts, shall I forget an excursion made at night with our hotel-proprietor among these flower-boats and their surroundings. Many of them were anchored side by side, and planks were stretched from one to the other, like a continuous sidewalk. As we walked along, we passed by countless open doors, each of which revealed a room handsomely furnished with mirrors, marble panels, and blackwood furniture. Here were usually grouped a dozen or more hilarious Chinamen, who were eating, drinking, and smoking, together with professional singing-girls, who are hired by the owners of these flower-boats to entertain their guests with songs and dances. We could not pause to observe them carefully, for foreigners are not wanted here, either as visitors or patrons. Meanwhile, at the very doorways of these handsome rooms, beggars in greasy garments crowded around us and almost threateningly demanded alms. "Look out for your pockets," was the proprietor's constant warning.

I have an indistinct remembrance of thus passing row after row of lighted boats, room after room of painted girls, group after group of sleek, fat Chinamen at tables, and then, on leaving these, of seeing miles of loathsome boats containing half-clad men stretched out on bunks and stupefied by opium, hag-like females cooking over charcoal braziers, and ragged children huddled in dark corners. I have a vivid recollection, too, of walking over slimy planks, of breathing pestilential odors, and of looking down on patches of repulsive water, so thick with refuse that they resembled in the lamp-light tanks of cabbage-soup. We also shudderingly passed some leper-boats, whose inmates are afflicted with that terrible disease, and who are forced to live as outcasts, begging for alms by holding out a little bag suspended from a bamboo pole. But finally shaking off the beggars who had followed us, and fleeing from this multitudinous life, as one might turn with horror from a pool of wriggling eels, I staggered into the boat belonging to the hotel. As it moved out into clearer water, I drew a long breath and looked up at the stars. There they were—calm and glorious as ever—scattered in countless numbers through measureless space. At any time, when one looks off into the vault of night, our little globe seems insignificant, but never did it seem to me so tiny and comparatively valueless, as when I left these myriads of Chinamen, swarming like insects in their narrow boats, apparently the reduction of humanity to the grade of microbes.

The gentleman who had accompanied me on this occasion was a Wall street broker. "Well," he exclaimed at last, "I have spent fifteen years among the Bulls and Bears, and I think my nerves are pretty strong, but for experiences which unnerve a man, and things which (glad as I am to have seen them once) I never wish to see again, nothing can compare with the sights and smells discovered in a trip to Chinatown!"

What impressed me most, however, in this experience was the idea that the millions in and around Canton are but an insignificant fraction of the Chinese race. It filled me with horror to reflect that all I had witnessed here was but a tiny sample of the entire empire. For Canton is said to be superior to many Chinese cities.

One writer has declared that, after walking through the Chinese quarter of Shanghai, he wanted to be hung on a clothes-line for a week in a gale of wind. Tientsin is said to be still worse for dirt and noxious odors. Even Pekin, from all accounts, has horribly paved and filthy thoroughfares, and its sanitary conditions are almost beyond belief. If such then be the state of things in the capital, what must it be in the interior towns, so rarely reached by foreigners?

It may, however, be objected that in the open ports, where they encounter foreign influence, the people are at their worst. But Chinamen are not impressionable, like the North American Indians or the aborigines on the islands in the Pacific, who eagerly adopt the vices of their conquerors, and speedily succumb to them.

China is one of the oldest countries in the world. Most of her ideas, customs, as well as the personal habits of her people are of immemorial antiquity, and her inhabitants are too conservative to change them. What one beholds in Canton, therefore, may be fairly supposed to exist from one extremity of the empire to the other.

But now, among so much that is disagreeable, one naturally inquires, "Are there not some redeeming features in this Chinese life?" I must confess there are not many discernible to the passing traveler, but I will gladly mention one about which I made careful inquiry. It is their honesty in business. It is the almost invariable custom for Chinese merchants every New-Year's day to settle their accounts, so that no errors may be carried over into the coming year; and I was told that if a tradesman fails to meet his liabilities at that time, he is considered a defaulter and his credit is forever lost. English and German merchants spoke to us of Chinese commercial honor in the highest terms, and drew comparisons in this respect between them and the Japanese which were not flattering to the latter.

Even in Japan, I found at all the foreign banks, in some of the shops, and in the Grand Hotel, that the cashiers were not Japanese, but Chinamen. Of course, one who has never traded with them cannot judge of their comparative abilities in a business way, but merchants in Yokohama, Shanghai, and Hong-Kong, as well as on the island of Shameen, told us that Chinamen were more trustworthy than the Japanese, and could be usually depended on to live up to their contracts, whether they proved favorable or unfavorable.

An English gentleman who had resided both in China and Japan for years, once said to me: "The more you see of the Japanese the less you will like them. The more you see of the Chinese the less you will dislike them. You will always like the Japanese; you will always dislike Chinamen; but the degree in which you cherish and express these sentiments will constantly diminish."

Besides the numerous differences between Oriental and Occidental customs noticed in Japan, we found in China many other proofs of what has been well called a state of topsy-turvydom. Thus, our tailors draw the needle inward; Chinese tailors stitch outward. With us military men wear their swords on the left side; in China they are worn on the right. In boxing the compass a Chinaman says "East, West, South, North." To mark a place in a book we turn the corner of a page inside; a Chinaman bends it the other way. We print the title of a volume on the back; the Chinese on the front. We play battledore and shuttlecock with our hands; the Chinese use their feet for a battledore and catch the shuttlecock on their foreheads. We use our own names when engaged in business; in China fancy names are taken. We carry one watch hidden in our pocket; a Chinese gentleman sometimes wears two outside his clothes, with their faces exposed. We black our boots; the Chinese whiten theirs. With us it is considered impolite to ask a person's age; in China it is a high compliment, and there a man is congratulated if he is old. Men, at least in the Occident, have plenty of pockets; the Chinaman has none, and uses his stockings as receptacles for papers, and at the back of his neck inserts his folded fan. At our weddings youthful bridesmaids are desired; at Chinese nuptials old women serve in that capacity. We launch our vessels lengthwise; the Chinese launch theirs sidewise. We mount a horse from the left; they mount their horses from the right. We begin dinner with soup and fish, and end with dessert; they do exactly the reverse. Finally, the spoken language of China is never written, and the written language is never spoken.

After all, however, we should remember that Chinamen who travel in our own country think that our customs are as strange as theirs appear to us. A prominent official of the Flowery Kingdom, who made the tour of Europe several years ago, took notes of what he saw, and published them on his return. Among them are the following: "Women, when going to the drawing-room of Queen Victoria regard a bare skin as a mark of respect." "When people meet and wish to show affection, they put their lips and chins together and make a smacking sound." This is not so difficult to understand, when we recollect that, like most Orientals, the Chinese do not kiss, and that even a mother does not kiss her own baby, although she will press it to her cheek. Again, he thus describes our dancing parties: "A European skipping match is a strange sight. To this a number of men and women come in couples, and enter a spacious hall; there, at the sound of music, they grasp each other by both arms, and leap and prance backward and forward, and round and round, till they are forced to stop for want of breath. All this," he adds, "is most extraordinary;" and when we Occidentals think of it, perhaps it is. A Chinese youth, after eating for the first time a European dinner, wrote of his experience: "Dishes of half-raw meat were served, from which pieces were cut with sword-like instruments and placed before the guests. Finally came a green and white substance, the smell of which was overpowering. This, I was informed, was a compound of sour milk, baked in the sun, under whose influence it remains until it becomes filled with insects; yet the greener and livelier it is, the greater the relish with which it is eaten! This is called Che-sze."

The object of most gruesome interest to me in Canton was its place of execution. On entering this, I looked about me with astonishment; for almost all the space between the rough brick walls was filled with coarse, cheap articles of pottery. Ah Cum explained, however, that when a batch of heads are to be cut off, the jars are all removed, much as a hotel dining-room is cleared for dancing. The condemned prisoners are always brought in baskets to this place, and are compelled to kneel down with their hands tied behind their backs. Their queues are then thrown forward, and they are beheaded at a single stroke. Traces of blood were visible on the ground, and from a mass of rubbish close at hand a grinning Chinaman pulled out several skulls which he had hidden there, and claimed a fee for exhibiting them. I was presented to the executioner, and asked him how many men he had himself decapitated, but he could not tell. He kept no count, he said—some days six, some days ten, in all probably more than a thousand. As he was resolutely opposed to having his picture taken, we placed his two-edged sword against the wall, and photographed that. When I was told that, once a week, twenty or thirty men are brought into this filthy court to die like cattle in a slaughter-house, I stood aghast, but when I subsequently learned that this is the only execution-place in a great province with a population of twenty millions, the number did not seem so appallingly excessive. This is, however, merely the average in ordinary times. After certain insurrections, such as the Taiping rebellion, this hideous square has seemed almost a reservoir of human blood. The venerable missionary, Dr. Williams, states that he saw here one morning at least two hundred headless trunks, and stacks of human heads piled six feet high. Careful estimates place the number executed here during fourteen months, at eighty-one thousand,—or more than thirteen hundred every week!