goes on, without mincing matters, to urge the utter extermination of foreigners and the preservation of the virtuous followers of Confucius. When we consider that this pamphlet had a wide, though, as it was pretended, a secret circulation ; and above all, when we reflect on the utter ignorance and superstition, and the fierceness of the half-starved classes whom it professed to caution and enlighten, and on whom the calm, moderate and subtle style of some of its worst passages must have produced a fearful effect, we cannot wonder at the result.
Tao believed implicitly in the strange stories which he had heard about the priests and about the poor Sisters, who had been so cruelly put to death. The ruins now were being care- fully guarded by a fleet of native gun-boats; but there were none of them at hand when succour was really needed, nor did they reach the spot until long after the deed had been accomplished.
I could not refrain from offering some remarks to my new man about the miserable mud huts in which his countrymen dwelt. Whereupon, with a vanity not uncommon in his race — although it surprised me at the time —he pointed out what he held to be the advantages of occupying such abodes. His argu- ments ran something like this : — The materials, mud and millet- stalks, can be had all over the plain, at every man's doorway cheaply — for the lifting, indeed ; whereas wood and stone are too dear for poor people to procure. Then, again, with such materials every man can be his own architect and mason; and finally, when floods and rain dissolve the tenement, it sinks down quietly, forming a mound in which the furniture and domestic utensils may repose, and on which the family may sit till the waters have subsided and they are able to set to again and raise up their broken walls.
The river here is spanned by one or two pontoon bridges.
