up by indiscriminate slaughter, for those are the means by which a weak government seeks to strike terror into the hearts of the people.
Occurrences such as that which I am now about to describe were accordingly by no means rare. The fight was ended and the fruits of the victory were reckoned up. It was reported to the conqueror that there were 254 heads and 231 queues and ears of people supposed to be rebels ; at any rate, they were heads and ears and queues, and these the Imperialist troops had to lay at the feet of the authorities. It is astonishing how some of these mutilated wretches survived. Thus I myself saw a man who reported that his head had been nearly severed from his body, but who succeeded in reaching Amoy. There were certainly marks of a severe wound on the neck, similar to those described by Mr. Hughes in the "China Review" for June 1875. I have also seen a man enjoying good health who had both ears chopped off and part of the scalp carried away. Mr. Hughes again tells us, in another paper, that female infant- icide is perhaps worse in this part of the Fukien province than in any other quarter of the Empire, and this corroborates the conclusion I myself had come to from enquiries 1 made on the spot. Mr. Hughes one day met a stout well-to-do-looking man of the coohe class, carrying two neat and clean round baskets, slung on a pole which he bore across his shoulder. *' Hearing the cry of a child, I stopped him, when I found that he had two infants in each basket;" and it is recorded that this crafty old speculator in innocents was on his way to sell his living burden at the Foundling Hospital, where he would receive 100 cash, or about fivepence, for a female child, and as much as three pounds for a boy.
This Foundling Hospital was organised by a native merchant
