62 
DETAILS RESPECTING COCHIN CHINA. 
very rapidly. Food and maintenance cost so little that the poorest 
do not give themselves any trouble, and have no dread of being able 
to nourish a numerous family. Polygamy is allowed ; and has be¬ 
come a general rule amongst the great and the mandarins, that is to 
say, amongst all those who have the means of maintaining several 
women. According to the ideas of the country, it is obligatory to 
take a second wife, when the first has no children. For, say they, it 
is a great ingratitude towards one’s parents not to seek the means 
of perpetuating their race. It is a maxim derived from Mencius, 
a Chinese philosopher, and is spread and rooted in the whole na¬ 
tion. This polygamy is the greatest obstacle to the progress of the 
thrislian religion amongst the great, but not at all amongst the peo¬ 
ple. Adultery, on the part of the man only, is regarded but as a 
very light fault. If the woman has no child, she will nothe liable to 
punishment on account of adultery. If she has one child, it is a ca¬ 
pital crime, which according to law ought; to be punished with death,- 
If she has several children, she ought to have her body cut in a 
hundred pieces, and thrown into the river. Parents are attached to 
their children. They never expose them, and do not kill them 
as they do in China. Only sometimes they sell them, when they are 
in great misery. A Cochin Chinese cannot be a slave, according to 
law, but they may have barbarians for slayes, and they have 
some. 
DRESS. 
Flax is unknown in Cochin China; the cloths of which their gar¬ 
ments are made, are of silk or cotton. In full dress the outward 
garment should be a long robe with large sleeves, of a green colour 
for men, and violet for women. It is to be observed that in the 
Northern provinces the garments are worn longest, and that they are 
progressively shorter, as we advance towards the South. Thus at 
Tongking the upper dress ought to descend to the ancle, or at least 
to the middle of the calf; in the neighbourhood of Hue it only 
descends to the knee; and in Lower Cochin China in does not pass 
the middle of the thigh. For the rest, it is every where very de¬ 
cent and modest. The Annamites allow their hair to grow; they 
roll it up and fasten it with a comb on the top of the head* 
Jhe men as well as the women ordinarily wear a handkerchief or a 
