Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 21.djvu/697

Rh which it is known in its family, the name by which it is known to others being only given to it at the completion of its fourth year, when its education is supposed to commence.

We have all heard the Chinese charged with infanticide. We believe that crime to be less prevalent with them than it is with us. If children are ever exposed, as has been seen on a way-side altar near Honam, we believe that bitter want and a hope that charity would provide for the child better than the mother could have been the moving causes. As a general rule, self-interest acts as the strongest bar to this vice. That the life of the male children should be preserved is most important, as the Chinese law will compel the sons to maintain their parents, and, in the event of all the sons dying, no one would be able to offer that worship at the tomb of the father and mother on which their happiness in another state is supposed to depend. With the girls preservation is almost as important, and they are a marketable commodity, either as wives or as servants. Indeed, it is no very rare thing to see a basketful of babies sent down from Canton to Hong-Kong for sale at prices ranging from two to five dollars. These are all girls; and the purchase of one or more of them is generally the first investment that a Chinese Aspasia makes of her earnings, a speculation sure ultimately to pay a very large interest on the money sunk.

In denying the existence of infanticide it is necessary to make one exception. This is among the Tan-kia, or boat-population. These are a race of people of different descent and different religion from the Chinese, governed by their own magistrates, and so looked down upon by the other classes that no child of a boat-woman can compete in the literary examinations, or, whatever his ability may be, become an aspirant for office. This class is excessively superstitious, and we have heard it stated by missionaries that, when a child belonging to people of this class suffers from any lingering malady, and recovery becomes hopeless, they will put it to death with circumstances of great cruelty, believing it to be not their child but a changeling, and fancying that a demon has taken the place of their offspring for the purpose of entailing on them expense and trouble for which they could never get any return.

The next article we come to is marriage: hedged in with formalities in all countries, but in none more so than in China. As we have just been speaking of the Tan-kia people, let us take Dr. Yvan's account of one of their marriages, and have done with them:

"In harvest-time," says the doctor, "any man of their class who wishes to marry goes into the next field and gathers a little sheaf of rice, which he fastens to one of his oars. Then, when he is in presence of the Tan-kia girl of his choice, he puts his oar into the water, and goes several times round the boat belonging to the object of his affections. The next day, if the latter accept his homage, she, in her turn, fastens a bunch of flowers to her oar, and comes rowing about near her betrothed."