NCE OF DEATH IN CHINA

"A wind of blight
From the mysterious far North-west we came,
Our greatness now their veriest babes have learned."

[Illustration: George Lynch Captured By The Boers.]

It was the day after Tung-Chow had been occupied by the Allies. I was
riding along a sunken road between the city wall and some high ground
on which houses were built. There was a sheer drop of considerable
height between the walls of the houses and the stony road below. The
shouts of Russians mingling with screams could be heard proceeding
from the houses. At the base of the cliff two Chinese girls were
lying. Their legs were bundled under them in a way that showed they
had jumped from the height above. From their richly embroidered
silken tunics and trousers, their elaborate coiffure, and their
compressed feet, they were evidently ladies. They were moaning
piteously, and one of them appeared to be on the point of death. Their
legs or hips had apparently been broken, or dislocated, by their jump.
As I went towards them, the one who appeared least injured shrank from
me with an expression of loathing and horror until I offered her a
drink out of my water-bottle. Her delicate, childish little hand
trembled violently on mine as she drank eagerly from it. The other was
almost too far gone to swallow. The hoarse cries of the soldiers,
mingled occasionally with a sobbing scream, came from the houses
above, telling what they had tried so desperately to escape from. They
lay there helpless, evidently in excruciating pain, under a brazen sun
that beat down on the deserted dusty road. There was no one within
reach to come to their assistance. And there was nothing for it but to
leave them there, as many under similar circumstances had had to be
left during our previous march of several days. This scene was typical
rather than singular. In a large number of Chinese houses in the
villages we passed through on our way up, at Tung-Chow, and in Pekin
itself, it was no unusual sight to see an entire family lying dead
side by side on the Kang, where they had suffocated themselves, or to
see them suspended from the rafters of their houses, where they had
committed suicide by hanging.

In the burden of corpses which the river Pei-ho carried downwards from
Pekin towards the sea were to be seen the bodies of many Chinese girls
and women. One day I myself counted five. There is no question
whatever that they had committed suicide