process of trepanning. Not even public business is necessarily urgent, the proverb to the contrary notwithstanding. We have heard of a Chinese fort of undoubted strength, in a most important position, armed with the most elaborate muniments of war, such as Krupp guns, and provided with foreign drilled troops, where on occasion of a rain every one of the sentries judiciously retired to the guard-houses, leaving not a single man anywhere in sight. They were "stopped by the rain"! The Tientsin massacre of 1870 might have been quadrupled in atrocity, but for a timely rain which deterred the desperadoes already on their way to the Settlement. A portable shower would be one of the most perfect defences which a foreign traveller in the hostile parts of China could desire. We are confident that a steady stream of cold water delivered from a two-inch nozzle would, within five minutes of solar time, disperse the most violent mob ever seen by a foreigner in China. Grape-shot would be far less effectual, for many would stop to gather up the spent shot, while cold water is something for which every Chinese from the Han Dynasty downwards entertains the same aversion as does a cat. Externally or internally administered, he regards it as equally fatal.
The subject of Chinese currency demands not a brief paragraph, but a comprehensive essay, or rather a volume. Its chaotic eccentricities would drive any Occidental nation to madness in a single generation, or more probably such gigantic evils would speedily work their own cure. In speaking of the disregard of accuracy we have mentioned a few of the more prominent annoyances. A hundred cash are not a hundred, and a thousand cash are not a thousand, but some other and totally uncertain number, to be ascertained only by experience. In wide regions of the Empire one cash counts for two; that is, it does so in numbers above twenty, so that when one hears that he is to be paid five hundred cash he understands that he
