BRONZES OF HSIN-CHENG HSIEN—BISHOP 459 
it was that did the digging, the result was one of the most remark- 
able in one sense, in another one of the most deplorable, in the 
annals of recent archeology, Most remarkable, in the quality of 
the objects discovered, in the new light thrown upon the ancient 
civilization of China, and in the many striking confirmations 
afforded of the reliability of the Chinese classics; most deplorable, 
in that no trained investigator was present to show how the objects 
could be removed from their setting without injury to themselves 
and to note down the information brought to light in the course 
of the digging but now, of course, lost forever. 
At the time of this, my first visit to the site, on the 8th of Septem- 
ber, 1923, several vertical shafts had been sunk to the level at which 
ihe bronzes had been found and over these were shears of stout 
poles from which depended baskets drawn up by ropes. Most, if 
not all, of the bronzes had already been unearthed before my arrival; 
in fact, I believe that no subsequent discoveries of this sort have 
taken place. I say “of this sort” advisedly, for, as will appear, 
much did turn up later of the greatest importance regarding the 
significance of this ancient interment. 
After an inspection of the dumps where the earth, bones, pottery, 
and other material brought up in the baskets were being thrown 
after being examined for fragments of bronze, I had myself lowered 
into one of the pits which looked the most promising and which was 
perhaps 12 or 14 feet in depth, although the surface had been too 
much disturbed to admit of any close measuring. At the bottom, 
in the north face of the pit, a workman was busy with a pickaxe, 
quarrying out some bones which I saw at once were human. I 
took his place, and with my heavy-bladed jackknife, carried for 
just such purposes, I freed from its earthen matrix a human 
mandible, at the same time partly uncovering the rest of the skull. 
In close association I found numbers of cowry shells with the backs 
ground off; numerous small discoidal mother-of-pearl beads of 
perhaps a quarter inch in diameter; several very thin laminae of 
jade, about three-quarters of an inch square, perforated at all four 
corners and covered with a thick coating of red pigment, which 
Dr. V. K. Ting tells me is oxide of iron; and a beautifully carved 
little jade tiger of archaic shape, a fragment of some larger object, 
probably a pendant. 
To judge from the position of the skull—for the rest of the 
skeleton had been quarried away before my arrival—the corpse had 
been placed on its back with the head to the north, in the extended 
position, and turned possibly a little to the right. The mandible, 
undoubtedly that of a man in mature life, was noteworthy for its 
very large and massive character. Dr. B. G. Anderson, of the 
