148 Through the Yang-tse Gorges 



handsome terrace bounded by two obelisks about thirty 

 feet high, surmounted by lions, and on the terrace three 

 stone tables surrounded by stone stools, all carved in 

 facsimile of their ordinary wooden prototypes. This is 

 curiously the case with all stonework in China: triumphal 

 arches, parapets, balustrades — all imitate the woodwork, to 

 which architecture was exclusively limited originally, as this, 

 in its turn, still takes its outlines from the earlier tent of the 

 Nomad. These stone seats and tables are used when the 

 relatives of the deceased visit the tomb to burn incense and 

 offer rice to the Manes, and" make a sort of picnic for the 

 occasion. The enclosure was planted with cypress, the 

 pointed cones of which represent the brush used in Chinese 

 writing — ^and hence literature. My host was careful to 

 point out to me the admirable "Feng-shui" of the tomb. 

 Facing a reach of the great river confined between steep 

 hills some five hundred feet below, up which the tomb looks 

 lengthways, the angle of the river, where it turns short off to 

 the left, being hidden in the slope of the hill in the immediate 

 foreground, all the water seen is " approaching " (" Lai-shui "), 

 bringing, as it were, blessings to the inhabitants, and so to 

 his posterity. Yet my same host, who had been thus care- 

 ful of the site of his own father's grave, had not hesitated to 

 outrage the " Feng-shui " of his neighbours — the good people 

 of Chung-king — ^by burrowing into their " Serpent's neck." 

 For the city of Chung-king represents a tortoise, and on it, 

 or round it, is coiled a snake. According to the Chinese, 

 these two species live together— an absurd belief, which, 

 however, I have never been able to shake, and the preva- 

 lence of which the subjoined extract from a local English 

 newspaper published at Shanghai testifies. Thus, a corre- 

 spondent at T'ai-yuen (General Mesney) writes: "March, 

 1883. — The Chinese generally assert that snakes and 



