r children's children
shall assuredly reap the fruits. The men were killed in a fight, or by
disease. We hold Hong-Kong, and by Our strength and wisdom it is a great
city, built upon a rock, and furnished with a dear little seven-furlong
racecourse set in the hills, and fringed as to one side with the homes
of the dead--Mahometan, Christian, and Parsee. A wall of bamboos shuts
off the course and the grand-stand from the cemeteries. It may be good
enough for Hong-Kong, but would you care to watch your pony running with
a grim reminder of "gone to the drawer" not fifty feet behind you? Very
beautiful are the cemeteries, and very carefully tended. The rocky
hillside rises so near to them that the more recent dead can almost
command a view of the racing as they lie. Even this far from the strife
of the Churches they bury the different sects of Christians apart. One
creed paints its wall white, and the other blue. The latter, as close to
the race-stand as may be, writes in straggling letters, "_Hodie mihi
cras tibi._" No, I should _not_ care to race in Hong-Kong. The scornful
assemblage behind the grand-stand would be enough to ruin any luck.

Chinamen do not approve of showing their cemeteries. We hunted ours from
ledge to ledge of the hillsides, through crops and woods and crops
again, till we came to a village of black and white pigs and riven red
rocks beyond which the dead lay. It was a third-rate place, but was
pretty. I have studied that oilskin mystery, the Chinaman, for at least
five days, and why he should elect to be buried in good scenery, and by
what means he knows good scenery when he sees it, I cannot fathom. But
he gets it when the sight is taken from him, and his friends fire
crackers above him in token of the triumph.

That night I dined with the _Taipan_ in a palace. They say the merchant
prince of Calcutta is dead--killed by exchange. Hong-Kong ought to be
able to supply one or two samples. The funny thing in the midst of all
this wealth--wealth such as one reads about in novels--is to hear the
curious deference that is paid to Calcutta. Console yourselves with
that, gentlemen of the Ditch, for by my faith, it is the one thing that
you can boast of. At this dinner I learned that Hong-Kong was
impregnable and that China was rapidly importing twelve and forty ton
guns for the defence of her coasts. The one statement I doubted, but the
other was truth. Those who have occasion to speak of China in these
part