0 ounces of prepared opium were publicly destroyed by fire in
the presence of an enormous crowd of people. The officials of the city
were present in person, and everywhere the event was looked upon as the
greatest public demonstration that the people had ever seen.

The missionary of whom I inquired denied that the infanticide at
Chao-t'ong was very great--things must be improving!

Previous to my arrival at the city I had instructed my English-speaking
boy to make inquiries in the city, and to let me know afterwards,
whether girls were still sold publicly.

"Have got plenty," he exclaimed, in describing this wholesale selling of
female children into slavery. "I know, I know; you wantchee makee buy.
Can do! You wantchee catch one piecee small baby, can catchee two, three
tael. Wantchee one piecee very much tall, big piecee, can catch fifty
dollar."

Continuing, he told me that prices were fairly high, a girl who could
boast good looks and who had reached an age when her charms were
naturally the strongest fetching the alarming amount of three hundred
taels. This was the highest figure reached, whilst small children could
be had for anything up to twenty. This wholesale disposal of young
girls, although the traffic was in some quarters emphatically denied to
exist--a denial, however, which was all moonshine--is one of the chief
sorrows of the district. And well it might be; for thousands of children
are disposed of in the course of a year for a few taels by heartless
parents, who watch them being carried away, like so much merchandise, to
be converted into silver, in many cases in this poverty-stricken
district merely to satisfy the craving for opium of some sodden wretch
of a man who calls himself a father. Time and time again, long after I
myself passed through Chao-t'ong, did I see little girls from three to
ten years of age being conveyed by pack-horse to the capital, balanced
in baskets on either side of the animal. This and the terrible
infanticide which exists in all poor districts of China menaces the
lives of all well-wishers of the entire province of Yuen-nan.

In the particular district of which I speak it is not an uncommon sight
to see little children being torn to pieces by dogs, the scavengers of
the Empire, perhaps by the very dogs that had been their playmates from
birth. I have been riding many times and found that my horse had stepped
on a human skull, and near by were the bones the dogs had left a