visit, was known in the district as Chao-Yang. His task was approaching completion and there was consequently more of peace and prosperity in the country than had been its lot for many previous years. Fang-Yao, for that was the mandarin's inharmonious designation, pursued a rough and ready sort of system in the conduct of his operations for putting matters to rights. Thus, at the village of Go-swa, near Double Island, he seized a man named Kwin-Kwong, well known to foreigners, and required him to surrender 200 of the chief rebels of his village. Kwin-Kwong produced 100, many of them, poor wretches, in- nocent substitutes for the true offenders. Under pressure and threats a few more victims were ultimately given up, and the whole were then beheaded, Kwin-Kwong's own skull being tossed into the pile to swell the number of the sufferers. It must have been bloody work ; more than i ,000 are said to have been de- capitated during Fang-Yao's memorable march.
Swaboi, one of the most powerful villages in the province, stands about two miles distant from Swatow, and for many years has monopolised the right to supply coolies to that town.
Several years ago, seventeen other villages combined against Swaboi, and resolved by force, if necessary, to put a stop to its monopoly of labour. The war lasted four years, and termin- ated in favour of Swaboi. At such times the villagers practise the most heartless cruelties on each other, burying their enemies, for example, while still alive, and head downwards, in graves prepared with quicklime and earth. It was, indeed, in this district that I gathered a notion of the inhuman treatment of idiots practised in some parts of China. I myself have seen an idiot exposed outside a village in a wooden cage, and there left for the passers-by to feed him, or better still to starve and die.
