e use
of opium as a poison, especially among Chinese women. The government
raises large sums from the import duty on opium, and tacitly connives at
its cultivation in most of the provinces, where the traders and mandarins
share between them the profits of this officially prohibited drug.

This part of the great historic highway on which we were now traveling,
between the two bends of the Hoang-ho, was found more extensively
patronized than heretofore. Besides the usual caravans of horses, donkeys,
and two-wheeled vans, we occasionally met with a party of shaven-headed
Tibetans traveling either as emissaries, or as traders in the famous
Tibetan sheep-skins and furs, and the strongly-scented bags of the
musk-deer. A funeral cortege was also a very frequent sight. Chinese
custom requires that the remains of the dead be brought back to their
native place, no matter how far they may have wandered during life, and as
the carriage of a single body would often be expensive, they are generally
interred in temporary cemeteries or mortuary villages, until a sufficient
number can be got together to form a large convoy. Mandarins, however, in
death as in life, travel alone and with retinue. One coffin we met which
rested upon poles supported on the shoulders of thirty-two men. Above on
the coffin was perched the usual white rooster, which is supposed to
incorporate, during transportation, the spirit of the departed. In funeral
ceremonies, especially of the father, custom also requires the children to
give public expression to their grief. Besides many other filial
observances, the eldest son is in duty bound to render the journey easy
for the departed by scattering fictitious paper-money, as spirit toll, at
the various roadside temples.

[Illustration: OPIUM-SMOKERS IN A STREET OF TAI-YUEN-FOO.]

[Illustration: MISSIONARIES AT TAI-YUEN-FOO.]

Singan-foo, the capital of the Middle Kingdom, under the Tsin dynasty, and
a city of the first importance more than two thousand years ago, is still
one of the largest places in the empire, being exceeded in population
probably by Canton alone. Each of its four walls, facing the cardinal
points, is over six miles long and is pierced in the center by a
monumental gate with lofty pavilions. It was here, among the ruins of an
old Nestorian church, built several centuries before, that was found the
famous tablet now sought at a high price by the British Museum. The
harassing mobs gathered fr