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32
Dzing District.

Ethnologist travelling through Chekiang finds much subject for working on in the marked tendency of the people to varied forms of worship. In each district there is more or less of superstition of a kind different from that of its neighbour. At one section the dings have small, at others, large idols;—at one, one class of paintings, at another, another class;—and northward, between the provinces of Anwhuy and Kiangsu, both idols and paintings disappear. It is hard for a foreigner to predicate from the disposition of the people in one provincewhat is likely to be expected in the province adjoining. In one district the inhabitants are highly philanthropic, keeping tea ready for the traveller's com fort, with payment to a priest to see that the kettle boils;—in another the tea has to be paid for, but in all the districts we are writing of, there is a laudable spirit of treating each other kindly, and doing for the neighbour what they would have done for themselves.

The broad mountain stream from the west is met at Tan-chay-woo by another stream from the north, following whose left bank the traveller, at two distance, arrives at Sun-chay-woo, the location of 2 or 3 families engaged in smelting iron sand;and a little further on is Djing-kong, a hamlet of 30 families, near the foot of a pass called Shang coo-ling. A farinaceous article called Leong-che-kee, is procured from the thin black roots of a fern growing in this quarter. Women and children are the manipulators, by beating the roots, which have an oily smell, on stones by the way side. Tea is grown in some quantity on the tops of the hills here; the ascents rising at an average of four feet in ten.

Descending, the course is about N. N. W. for one mile to the village of Shee-kong, of 150 families,