Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/398

306 his head is cut off with a sword. Sometimes there are rows of them to be executed, and it has been described to me how the front row, kneeling and smoking cigarettes, turns round and watches with interest the heads of the other rows coming off. Another form of execution is the Ling-chi, when they are hacked to pieces alive.

Li Hung Chang, as a result of his European tour, introduced another form by strangling, after which the bodies are hung up in cages which stand there. Not one of these " tourist sights " did we see.

The Clepsydra, or Water Clock, we did see. Three copper vessels are placed on platforms one over the other. In the bottom one is an indicator scale which rises as the water fills it, and shows the time, which is exhibited on a board outside. It has been destroyed and repaired, and has been in use over five hundred years.

A place that was curious,but not unpleasant—indeed, I liked it—was the "City of the Dead." There are small rooms, arranged and decorated like chapels, in which rest the coffins of those who die far from home, or whose families rent a room till they decide where to bury them. The outside coffin is of fine black lacquer. Tea and rice are placed every day on the "altar" for the refreshment of the corpse. There was something attractive about the place; it was carefully laid out and tended, and seemed to me an excellent idea. Some tortured-feet Tartar ladies were walking painfully about, with flowers in their hands. I am so sympathetic that to my companion's surprise I quite unconsciously went walking painfully too!

As we sat outside the hotel in the evening, a Chinese boy came and asked if we were not going to the Flower Boats, and thinking we did not