30 SNOW AND FROST 



winds about the Bohea mountains, is annually 

 frozen over. Here vagrants are seen ranging them- 

 selves along the most frequented parts, begging alms, 

 and exciting the compassion of passengers by strew- 

 ing paddy-husk on the ice, to prevent slipping. 

 The summer is as hot as at Canton ; though the 

 mornings and evenings are sometimes sufficiently 

 cold to render a Ma-qua-czu (a kind of spencer) 

 necessary in traversing the hills. 



I shall now subjoin an extract from a letter re- 

 ceived from the aged and reverend Father Carpina, 

 at this time the vicar-general of the province, and 

 long resident in the eastern part of it, to whom I 

 am also indebted for an account of the range of 

 the thermometer, and much valuable information 

 concerning the tea tree. He states, in answer to 

 some questions put to him, that " The tea shrubs 

 were neither injured, nor the harvest retarded by 

 the cold of 1815, notwithstanding there fell in the 

 month of February four spans (about thirty-three 

 inches English) of snow in Fo-gan, lat. 27° 4/ 48", 

 and six spans (forty-nine inches) in Ning-te ; so 

 that the covers to the indigo plants, strongly fixed 

 to protect them from the frost, sun, and wind, gave 

 way under the weight of snow. At the close of 

 the same year, about the middle of December, some 

 days of severe cold and frost occurred. Upon one 

 occasion, about three o'clock in the afternoon, on a 

 beautiful sunshiny day," he observes, " I saw two 

 boys, each with a piece of ice the size of a coach 



