138 
THE HOME OF FOIIGOTTEN MILLIONS. 
wbut the pilot had told me in regard to the ‘last duck.' 
It began to look like the truth.” 
Two minutes after leaving the bridge we landed on 
the south bank, and, after a ten minutes’ walk through 
narrow, dark, and filthy streets, found ourselves ascend- 
ing an elevation in the rear of the town, upon which was 
the Consulate. We were received with great politeness, 
drank a cup of good coffee, and were invited to take a 
walk before breakfast. My journal says : — 
“And now we undertook a walk while breakfast was 
preparing, — we and the four dogs, slim Mr. Clark, the 
consul, and extremely stout Mr. Sloan, his jovial partner. 
We passed through the back-entrance and found our- 
selves upon the edge of an immense graveyard, — an old 
graveyard of the oldest nation under the sun : the whole 
face of the outspreading country was mounds, mounds, 
nothing but mounds. Away over, on a shady elevation, 
Mr. Clark pointed out the burial-place that had been 
allotted to foreigners, and here and there you could see a 
house, or a solitary tree, or a huge rock; but every thing 
else was graves, — nothing but graves for miles and miles. 
Footpaths without number ran over and through these 
oblong hillocks, and a long heavy grass grew in rare 
luxuriance over their uneven surface. We walked through 
those hard-beaten paths and saw hundreds of bare-legged 
women and children cutting and bundling the grass that 
shaded their ancestoi’s, and carrying it to the opposite 
city of eight hundred thousand souls. They looked at 
our uniform curiously as we passed, and smiled and 
laughed with great good-nature. During this walk Mr. 
Sloan gave me much information in regard to the people 
