sentence. A cangue may weigh one hundred pounds, or only twenty, but in any case it is a dreadful punishment, kept on as it is for periods varying from six hours to six weeks. Imagine days and nights of cramp and sleep lessness, the harassing stings of mosquitoes and other tormenting insects worrying the naked skin, and no hand to brush them away; the scorching sun, and no screen; the chilly night, and no covering; weariness, dizzy brains, limbs racked by dire fatigue, fever, delirium, the pressure of the hard yoke on the galled shoulders, the strangling collar, the agony of long want of sleep, the thirst, the shame! They often go mad in the cangue, it is said; they fall asleep on their feet, like horses, from sheer exhaustion; they perish, and are found dead in their cages, like so many neglected wild animals in captivity. But the cangue is a favorite punishment among the judges. There are other marauders in China who are less ceremoniously dealt with. All the larger mountain-ranges have an aboriginal population, quite alien in tongue, manners, aspeat, and blood from the Chinese. The .Lowas, on the Burmah frontier; the TchangColas, in Quangsi province, are quite inde pendent, and often troublesome. But the boldest and fiercest hill-men in China are the Mido-tse, who inhabit a huge chain of snow capped heights that occupy nearly the centre of the empire, the Nan-ling mountains. These savage highlanders make regular descents upon the rich grain-producing plains and harass the three great roads which cross their difficult country. . In spite of the foundling hospitals here and there attached to a con vent of Bonzes, or a pagoda, infanticide is the great distinctive crime of China, as of all
Asia, from Lebanon to Corea. The esteem in which women are held, their social degra dation, the lack of profit in female labor as compared to male, in a country where men do work of all kinds, combine to prompt cruel massacres of the innocents. But here the mandarin is meekness itself; the magistrate holds child-killing to be no murder, and ex acts no death penalty for the crime, though mildly haranguing against it from the judg ment-seat, and denouncing it in the Gazette. But the murder of an adult, especially of the ' male sex, is a serious matter. China is the native country of coroners; her officials shine in an inquest, and they have ancient and wonderful rules for detecting hidden homicide, and for apportioning the responsi bility among those who were the foes of the deceased, those who touched the body with out orders, and those on whose ground the mute witness was found. divided The policemen, into privates, the corporals, actual constables, and sergeants. are They are sheltered in a magistrate's yamun, if bachelors; but if married, they often in habit a hut within the compound of their su perior's dwelling. They eat rice and melons at the charge of the province, and they re ceive a very small monthly payment, enough to buy tobacco and opium, should their chief not embezzle it on the road. But for this the pheasant-plumed care little; their depend ence is on bribery, and where denunciation may cause ruin, and must cause annoyance, no mouchard need despair of a comfortable living. Curiously enough, the police extort less from the rich than from the poor. To crush a wealthy man is not such an easy task as in Mussulman countries, and justice grows gentle as she mounts the social ladder.
