ght of land calling the notice of our
native valet to the masts of a vessel sinking below the horizon. We
pointed out to him that were the earth a perfectly flat surface its
disappearance would not be so comparatively sudden, nor would the ship
appear to sink. But at the last moment, when we felt that conviction
was entering into his soul and that another convert had been made to
the great cause of scientific truth, he calmly replied that it was
written--"Heaven is round, earth is square," and he didn't very well
understand how books could be wrong!

The sun is generally supposed to pass at sunset into the earth, and to
come out next morning at the other side. The moon is supposed to rise
from and set in the ocean. Earthquakes are held to result from
explosions of sulphur in the heart of the earth; rain is said to be
poured down by the Dragon God who usually resides on the other side of
the clouds, and the rainbow is believed to be formed by the breath of
an enormous oyster which lives somewhere in the middle of the sea, far
away from land. Comets and eclipses of the sun are looked upon as
special warnings to the throne, and it is usual for some distinguished
censor to memorialise the Emperor accordingly. The most curious
perhaps of all these popular superstitions are those which refer to
thunder, lightning, and hail, regarded in China as the visitation of
an angry and offended god. In the first place it is supposed that
people are struck by thunder and not by lightning--a belief which was
probably once prevalent in England, as evidenced by the English word
_thunderstruck_. Sir Philip Sydney writes:--"I remained as a man
thunder-stricken." Secondly, death by thunder is regarded as a
punishment for some secret crime committed against human or divine
law, and consequently a man who is not conscious of anything of the
kind faces the elements without fear. Away behind the clouds during a
storm or typhoon sit the God of Thunder armed with his terrible bolts,
and the Goddess of Lightning, holding in her hand a dazzling mirror.
With this last she throws a flash of lightning over the guilty man
that the God of Thunder may see to strike his victim; the pealing
crash which follows is caused by the passage through the air of the
invisible shaft--and the wrongs of Heaven are avenged. Similarly, hail
is looked upon as an instrument of punishment in the hands of the Hail
God, directed only against the crops and possessions of such mo