foot of the coffin stands a long table covered with a white cloth, and literally loaded with the materials for a Chinese feast. At the head of the table is a tall pyramid of pink and white rice-cakes, choice fruits, confectionery, gold tinsel ornaments, and flowers. Next comes a huge platter, upon which rests a hog roasted whole, and fancifully adorned, flanked by a chicken and a duck fashioned, with a strange, perverted ingenuity, into the semblance of grotesque, half-human figures, and at the lower end there is a sheep also roasted whole, with a crown of the native wool, fancifully cut and trimmed, still adorning the head. A multitude of little dishes, containing sauces and condiments, are scattered over the table as adjuncts to this feast of the dead. A tall young Chinaman, who is either priest or chief mourner,—we are in doubt which,—stands by the head of the table and directs the ceremonies. He is clad in a simple narrow robe of common unbleached white cotton sheeting, confined at the waist with a girdle of the same material, and has a strip of the same goods bound around his head. Three assistants, each similarly clad, are ranged alongside the coffin, and at intervals they kneel and bring their foreheads down to the dust, wailing forth their grief—real or simulated:the latter probably—in unison, chanting what may be a dirge, or a prayer, or a hymn of praise, in the highest key on the scale, while a band, consisting of half a dozen players on the Chinese clarionet, and its variations, one-stringed fiddle, and the indispensable, inevitable, clanging gong, standing around the head of the coffin, fill the
