mui Khatun, treated them
with delicate consideration. This amiable lady, on being shown the spoils
that came from Lin-ngan, only wept, and said to her husband, "So also shall
it be with the Mongol empire one day!" The eldest of the two boys who had
escaped was proclaimed emperor by his adherents at Fu-chau, in Fo-kien, but
they were speedily driven from that province (where the local histories, as
Mr. G. Phillips informs me, preserve traces of their adventures in the
Islands of Amoy Harbour), and the young emperor died on a desert island off
the Canton coast in 1278. His younger brother took his place, but a battle,
in the beginning of 1279 finally extinguished these efforts of the expiring
dynasty, and the minister jumped with his young lord into the sea. It is
curious that Rashiduddin, with all his opportunities of knowledge, writing
at least twenty years later, was not aware of this, for he speaks of the
Prince of Manzi as still a fugitive in the forests between Zayton and
Canton. (_Gaubil; D'Ohsson; De Mailla; Cathay_, p. 272.) [See _Parker_,
supra, p. 148 and 149.--H.C.]

There is a curious account in the _Lettres Edifiantes_ (xxiv. 45 seqq.)
by P. Parrenin of a kind of _Pariah_ caste at Shao-hing (see ch. lxxix.
note 1), who were popularly believed to be the descendants of the great
lords of the Sung Court, condemned to that degraded condition for
obstinately resisting the Mongols. Another notice, however, makes the
degraded body rebels against the Sung. (_Milne_, p. 218.)

NOTE 7.--There is much about the exposure of children, and about Chinese
foundling hospitals, in the _Lettres Edifiantes_, especially in Recueil
xv. 83, seqq. It is there stated that frequently a person not in
circumstances to _pay_ for a wife for his son, would visit the foundling
hospital to seek one. The childless rich also would sometimes get children
there to pass off as their own; _adopted_ children being excluded from
certain valuable privileges.

Mr. Milne (_Life in China_), and again Mr. Medhurst (_Foreigner in Far
Cathay_), have discredited the great prevalence of infant exposure in
China; but since the last work was published, I have seen the translation
of a recent strong remonstrance against the practice by a Chinese writer,
which certainly implied that it was _very_ prevalent in the writer's own
province. Unfortunately, I have lost the reference. [See _Father G.
Palatre, L'Infanticide et l'Oeuvre de la Ste. Enfance en Chine_, 187