Cuar. XVII] COFFINS EXPOSED. 325 
seen kneeling by the grave of her lost husband ; 
children, often very young, shedding tears of sor- 
row for a father or mother; and, sometimes, an old 
man whose hair was white with age, was there 
mourning the loss of those whom he had looked to 
as the support of his declining years. All were 
cutting the long grass and weeds which were 
growing round the tombs, and planting their fa- 
vourite flowers to bloom and to decorate them. 
Near Amoy, this scattered mode of interring the 
dead has been departed from, and perhaps neces- 
sarily, in consequence of the large population; in the 
country, however, I sometimes found tombs in re- 
tired and inaccessible parts of the hills here, as well 
as in the more southern provinces; but these were 
evidently the property of the wealthy inhabitants. 
As the traveller proceeds northward, the circular 
form of the tombs is less common and they become 
more varied in their appearance. In Chusan, 
Ningpo, and various other places in that district, a 
great number of the coffins are placed on the sur- 
face of the ground and merely thatched over with 
straw. I met with these coffins in all sorts of 
places,—-on the sides of the public highway—on 
the banks of the rivers and canals—and in woods 
and other retired parts of the country. Sometimes 
the thatch was completely off, the wood rotten, and 
the remains of the Chinamen of former days ex- 
posed to view. On one hill side on the island of 
Chusan, skulls and bones are lying about in all 
xy 3 
