MODERN MONGOLS. 621 



den thaw was always apt to turn brooks into rivers and rivers into 

 raging seas. The summers, at the same time, became warmer and 

 drier. Famines, such as only India had seen before, crowded the cities 

 with refugees. Charitable institutions were managed by agents of a 

 paternal government, and paupers were rarely suffered to perish in 

 wayside ditches, but hundreds of thousands were huddled together in 

 parish suburbs and fed on minimum rations of the cheapest available 

 food. 



It was then that the masses were forced to apostatize from the 

 dietetic tenets of Buddhism; abstinence from animal food became im- 

 possible; sanitary scruples had to be disregarded; whole settlements of 

 famine victims were compelled to subsist exclusively on offal. 



Millions of mechanics had to fight to struggle for existence by re- 

 ducing their wants. The prices of food had doubled, and in order to pay 

 the cost of one daily meal all luxuries had to be relinquished. Sleep 

 and oblivion of misery became the only alternatives of hopeless toil, 

 and those who could save a few taels yielded to the temptation of sup- 

 plementing those blessings by means of chemical anodynes. Opium- 

 smoking became a national vice. 



The 'opium war* did not rivet the yoke of that curse. It merely 

 clinched the grip of a British trading company. The Chinese gov- 

 ernment had attempted to cancel their franchise, but only with a view 

 to diverting its profits into the pockets of their own speculators. The 

 total suppression of the traffic would have been not only difficult, but 

 practically impossible. We might as well try to prohibit tobacco in 

 North America. 



Yet the results of these cooperating factors of degeneracy have 

 stopped short of the extremes that might have been expected in a land 

 of earth-despisers. Buddhism in its orthodox Chinese form is radically 

 pessimistic. It inculcates a belief in the worthlessness of all terrestrial 

 blessings, and considers life a disease, with no cure but death. And 

 not death by suicide, either; the victims of misery must drain life's 

 cup to the dregs, to cure the very love of existence, and thus prevent 

 the risk of re-birth. 



The value of health and wealth is thus depreciated in a manner 

 that might tend to aggravate the recklessness of life-weariness; yet the 

 South Mongol is conservative, even in his vices. An inalienable in- 

 stinct of thrift makes him shrink from senseless excesses. Tavern 

 brawls are less frequent in Canton than in Edinburgh; the topers of 

 the Flowery Kingdom get less efflorescent than ours, their love-crazed 

 swains less extravagant. Absolute imbecility, as a consequence of 

 poison habits, is a rare phenomenon in Mongoldom; nine out of ten 

 sots remain self-supporting; the heritage of industrial habits is hardly 

 ever lost altogether. 



