31 
in the house told him that they had been in- 
formed by the crev/ of the Standard Oil Go's 
launch that they had seen the body of a beauted 
foreigner picked up in the river at a point 
thirty miles above V7uhu, and that he had been 
buried the same day. A peculiar circumstance 
was that the representative of the Standard Oil 
Co. returned on the launch from the place near 
v/here the body v/as found, and the crew mentioned 
the fact that they had seen the body of the 
foreigner; this is probably due to the fact 
that they v/ere frightened. 
The next morning at 7 a.i^. I boarded the 
launch of the Standard Oil Co. and started for 
the place v/here the body had been buried. The 
crew took me to the exact spot where the body 
had been buried, on a hill about one hundred • - 
yards from the shore of the river. I was taken 
to the place by tv^o inhabitants and there saw a 
mound, which always signifies in China a "grave". 
Chinese really do not dig graves; the coffin is 
placed on the ground and covered by a mound of 
earth, v/hich is in some cases concreted. In 
this case, the mound was made of turf, and v/as 
not a very high one. After some difficulty I 
persuaded three Chinese laborers nearby to open 
the mound. Chinese are very adverse to tamper- 
ing v/ith a grave in any vmy; in fact it is a 
very serious offense to move a grave without 
the permission of the local official. The 
mound was finally removed, and the body dis- 
closed. The body had been placed on tv/o planks, 
and one plank covered it; it was not a coffin in 
any manner. The head was already badly decom- 
posed, but a beard was seen, and the body was 
attired in a white undershirt and a pair of grey 
trousers. I had the body covered again, and then 
v;ent into tov.-n to make arrangements regarding the 
purchase of a coffin and the removal of the body. 
I had been informed that the body had been 
picked out of the river by a boatman living in 
the town of Ti-Keng, Anhui Province, v;here the 
body had been buried, and that the life saving 
station (Chinese characters) had taken over the 
body and had given the boatman $.P>0 (cents) and 
had permitted him to take the pair of shoes on 
the body as a further revmrd. The officer in 
charge of the life saving station is also the 
customs officer, and v;as a very amiable Chinese 
and disposed to assist me in every v/ay. The 
September ?1, I9I8, 
