204 Through the Yang-tse Gorges 



penny of our money, and, wonderful to relate, the coolies 

 demand no more from a Chinese-speaking, and hence civi- 

 lized, barbarian than from a native. I thus usually took a 

 chair through the city, in order to avoid the crowd, as far as 

 the gate, being able to walk through the country in perfect 

 freedom. Leaving the west gate, the road falls to a narrow 

 ravine, rising again beyond over the grave-covered hills, 

 which, crescent-like, extend across between the two rivers, 

 and wall in the city in its rear. In the ravines are situated 

 the crematoria, in which the waste paper of the city is 

 solemnly committed to the flames. These crematoria are 

 elaborate places, comprising a walled enclosure, in which is 

 a garden and a cottage for the superintendent of the cere- 

 monies, besides the square pagoda-shaped tower some fifty 

 feet high, in which the paper is offered up. The Chinese 

 character is esteemed too sacred for any paper on which it 

 has been inscribed to be allowed to descend to base uses : 

 hence the formation of benevolent societies, who maintain a 

 corps of colporteurs whose business it is to make periodical 

 house-to-house visitations, and collect every scrap of writing- 

 paper which has been thrown aside. These colporteurs- are 

 further armed with a pair of bamboo tongs, with which to 

 seize any fragments that have been unwittingly neglected 

 amidst the garbage of the streets. Thus we see, what is 

 also noticeable in other lands, more given to superstition 

 than to science, a great amount of labour devoted to a 

 superstitious object which would be better spent on 

 scavenging. 



My goal on the present occasion was a country house 

 situated on the banks of Siao ho, about two miles out of 

 town. The place is celebrated for its flower-garden, and is 

 a resort for dinner-parties. The path winds through the 

 hills in a gradual descent, until a walled enclosure, situated 



