Page:Pearl of Asia (Child JT, 1892).pdf/179

Rh the graveyard is located on the side of a hill, which is terraced for the purpose. That at Hong Kong is one of the curiosities of the place while the cemetery at Canton covers many acres and is closely filled with their tombs.

Modern skeptics could learn much from these stoical Asiatics who thus care for the bodies of their deceased relatives, which proves conclusively that their belief in the beatitude of the life to come is serious and well founded, that they wilt live again in the hereafter and meet beyond the invisible river in the celestial Nirvana, a reunion that shall be eternal, where the heavenly savannahs undulating far away shall yield the choicest rice, the waters that flow through emerald vales be plethoric with fish, umbrageous trees that furnish shade bend to the earth with choicest fruit, birds of rarest plumage fill the groves with melody and demosellesdemoiselles [sic], fairer than the blush of morn, welcome them to joys supernal, a land of dreamy wantonness that they have caught glimpses of after inhaling the poppies languorous power, the curse of the mongolian.