Chinese Police. faces, and uttering leonine roars of martial wrath! Some series of pictures by native artists portray the glories of that homeward march; some of the prisoners in bamboo cages, others tied to poles, and loaded with irons; the robber chief, a man of great height and corpulence, with hands bound behind his back, dragged forwards by a tow-rope held by eight men, while as many more tug at a retaining cord in the rear, each puller having a naked sword in one hand; while the civil mandarin caracoled beside, and brandished his sabre over that detested head. Then the passage through the streets of the benighted city; the tramping, inquisitive crowd; the waving scarves; the blazing incense; the flowers strewing the way; the triumphalarch, covered with lamps and ribbons; the fireworks crackling and spluttering; the gaudy lanterns flaring at every door upon the glad procession; and the ever-ready poet stepping up, smirking, to offer his neat ode, the ink of which is hardly dry. The imme diate effect of so successful an enterprise is to put a considerable sum of silver into the purse of the civil mandarin, to gain for the captain and subalterns money or promotion, and for the soldiers a gratuity and double ra tions. Everybody is complimented, flattered, pelted with flowers, fed with sugar-plums, and enshrined in elegant verse and Gazette paragraphs. But the poor captives have the thorns for their share, not the roses. Beaten, cuffed, spit upon, assailed by every cowardly member of the mob, they are glad to find a resting-place in the gaol. Next day, or per haps a day or two later, after the magistrates have come to an end of feasting and flattery, after his excellency the viceroy has sent off by an extra courier a flaming despatch to Pekin — a despatch of which not only the contents, but also the paper, are couleur de rose, and when the populace have been regaled with fireworks, boat-races, and theatrical
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shows, the trial comes on. There is evidence enough against the captives to consign them to the scaffold if they had a thousand lives apiece. But it is an object to find out who were their accomplices, what are the ramifi cations of their society, and so forth. Usu ally, too, there are individual crimes to be cleared up. There is a long and hard con test between the rival obstinacies of torment ors and culprits; days and nights are con sumed in an interrogatory where the talk is all on one side, for the kouan-kouen die and suffer mutely, and take pride in their stubborn endurance. All that whips and sticks and brimstone matches can inflict, dangling on iron hooks, and swinging in mid-air by a piece of whip-cord artfully knotted around each thumb, semi-suffocation in smoke, dis locations, loppings of ears and toes, are tried in turn, but rare are the confessions to be wrung out of the sufferer's sullen resolution. The bandit usually " dies game," and betrays nobody. He is proud of his courage and fi delity; he has no hope of life, were he to be never so garrulous. He gives up the ghost and makes no sign, even to escape the cangue. This cangue is the main prop of Mongolian order — the stocks, pillory, and penitential-cell of Cathay. It is merely a cage of cross-bars, which are sometimes of bamboo, sometimes of iron, sometimes of heavy timber. The prisoner's body is en closed in this cage, which reaches from his knees to his neck; his head and limbs are alone free, his hands being strapped to a bar. Now it is manifest that a criminal thus accoutred must be the prop and support of his own portable gaol; a captive Atlas, he carries about his own dungeon, and he cannot lie down to rest, but must pass whole days and nights on his feet, the poles attached to the cangue preventing him from lying down, while to the framework is fixed a placard in scribed with the wretch's name, offence, and
