Page:Through China with a camera.pdf/172

 I afterwards went a second time to see this being that looked more brute than man, but he had died in his cage.

Amoy is the next open port in our northern route; and though situated in the province of Fukien, its geological features resemble those of Swatow. Thus the same decomposing hills crowned with huge granite bare boulders, are to be seen at the entrance of the harbour ; and one of these boulders which faces the port, has some passages connected with the local history of the place engraven in huge characters upon its stony sides. Several of them rear their grey heads to a great height out of the water, or above the shore close by, and these the natives look up to with reverence and awe, as objects intimately con- nected with the Feng-shui, or good luck of the port. But in such a place as this it is but seldom that good luck waits upon the lower and most superstitious classes. The Amoy men make good soldiers, so at least it is said ; they certainly fought well for their independence, and were the last to yield to the Tartar invaders, and those upon whom the conquerors seemed to have pressed most heavily. To this day they wear the turban which they assumed to hide the tonsure and queue imposed on them by the conquerors. The dialect here is so different from that spoken in Canton as to lead my boys to imagine that they were once more out of China and in some foreign realm. But a glimpse of the town quickly reassured them. There they fell in with men from their own province, and with odours and ap- pearances so unmistakably Chinese that there was no getting over the fact; and they soon acknowledged that this indeed could still be no other than their own Chinese land. At Amoy, as in Swatow and most other Chinese seaport towns, the houses in the native quarter are huddled together like a crowd of sight- seers, all eager to stand in the front row along the water's