288 HOSPITALS Foil SICK AND DEAD. 



also personally visits the thirty-six schools established 

 within the province, where some 400 children are tau<,'-ht, 

 with five orphanag^es of al)out 100 children each, the 

 entire cost of which amounts to barely £450, and all 

 this, 1 was told, is not tlie twentieth part of the good 

 work done by the French Mission all over China at a 

 very small cost. One cannot speak too highly of their 

 labour of pure Christian love, both in China and in 

 India. In the latter country I have seen them at 

 work during the late famine, when they likewise 

 established orphanages in certain centres and woi-ked 

 with an iron will which saved thousands of lives. 



There is an enormous amount of mendicity and 

 leprosy at Canton, and local institutions are quite 

 inadequate to cope with the evil. There is a large 

 hospital, a most wretched place, with room for about 

 a thousand old men oi- patients. Here each inmate 

 sleeps under the shadow of his own oj)en coffin, which 

 he may fill on the morrow; but Chinamen contemplate 

 death with the most wonderful stoicism, and it is a 

 common habit with them to provide a coffin, for the 

 rich made of camphoi- or cedar- wood, during their life- 

 time. 



Another kind of hospital exists for the dead, con- 

 sisting of several narrow alleys with small chambers, 

 where for twelve shillings a month a coffin can be 



