337 
CEREMONIES ATTENDING THE FUNERAL OF THE LATE 
KING OF COCHIN CHINA. 
About four months ago I received several numbers of your 
valuable Journal which you had kindly sent me, and for which 
I give you many thanks. This Journal, conducted in a good 
spirit, appears to me calculated to do good. I wish I could 
send you something of interest to insert in your pages, but the 
painful position in which the persecution places us, prevents 
me from exploring the country in which I am, and closely 
studying the manners of the people whom Divine Providence 
has called me to convert. I am obliged like all my brethren 
in Cochin-China, to keep myself shut up in a miserable cabin, 
and all that I do must always be done through intermediate 
means. However, 1 will give an account of an event which 
has made some little noise in the kingdom this year. It is 
the death and funeral of Thidn Tri, king of Cochin-China. 
The king Thien Tri, son of the cruel Mirih Mang, had 
scarcely resolved to tread in the footsteps of his father, and 
renew the persecution of the Christian religion, and hardly 
had he published sanguinary edicts against the ministers ot 
that religion, and against those who did not wish to abandon 
them by abase apostacy, when the hand of God was laid upon 
him. He fell ill, and his sickness, it is said, was caused by 
the fears which the Europeans inspired in him. In spite of 
all the doctors, in spite of all the sorcerers, the sooth-sayers, 
the mountebanks and other individuals of that kind, whom 
he caused to assemble from all quarters, for in no part are 
all these absurd superstitions more in vogue than in this 
kingdom, Thidn Tri died on the 2(5fh of the 9th moon (3rd 
November) 1847. When the king was dead, it was necessary 
to consult other sorcerers, and mountebanks of another kind 
in order to know the day and hour propitious for enshrouding 
and encoffining the body. The coffins here are made of a 
single large piece of wood hollowed out, and are covered with 
another piece of wood, also hollowed. They are then painted 
and varnished. The lid shuts up the coffin hermetically, so that 
it can be kept in the house many months and even y : ears, 
without any bad smell exhaling from it. When the corpse of 
Thifin Tri was deposited in the coffin, there were also deposi¬ 
ted in it many things for the use of the deceased in the other 
world, such as his crown, turbans, clothes ot all descriptions, 
gold, silver and other precious articles, rice and other provi¬ 
sions. In all these lands the pagans act as if they believed 
