Another Description Of Punishment Is The Bastinado With The Bamboo, Which, When Applied To The More Tender Parts Of The Body, Very Often, As Early As The Fifteenth Blow, Frees Its Victim For Ever From All His Earthly Sufferings.

Other more severe punishments, which in no way yield the palm to those of the Holy Inquisition, consist in flaying the prisoner alive, crushing his limbs, cutting the sinews out of his feet, and so on.

Their modes of carrying out the sentence of death appear to be mild in comparison, and are generally confined to strangling and decapitation, although, as I was informed, in certain extraordinary cases, the prisoner is executed by being sawed in two, or left to die of starvation. In the first case, the unhappy victim is made fast between two planks, and sawed in two longitudinally, beginning with the head; and, in the second, he is either buried up to his head in the ground, and thus left to perish of want, or else is fastened in one of the wooden yokes I have described, while his food is gradually reduced in quantity every day, until at last it consists of only a few grains of rice. In spite of the horrible and cruel nature of these punishments, it is said that individuals are found ready, for a sum of money, to undergo them all, death even included, instead of the person condemned.

In the year 1846, 4,000 people were beheaded at Canton. It is true that they were the criminals of two provinces, which together numbered a population of 9,000,000 souls, but the number is still horrible to contemplate. Is it possible that there could really be so many who should be looked upon as criminals - or are persons sentenced to death for a mere nothing - or are both these suppositions true?

I once happened to go near the place of execution, and to my horror beheld a long row of still bleeding heads exposed upon high poles. The relations enjoy the privilege of carrying away and interring the bodies.

There are several different religions in China, the most prevalent being Buddhism. It is marked by great superstition and idolatry, and is mostly confined to the lower classes. The most natural is that of the wise Confucius, which is said to be the religion of the court, the public functionaries, the scholars, and educated classes.

The population of China is composed of a great many very different races: unfortunately, I am unable to describe their several characteristics, as my stay in China was far too short. The people I saw in Canton, Hong-Kong, and Macao, are of middling stature. Their complexion varies with their occupation: the peasants and labourers are rather sun-burnt; rich people and ladies white. Their faces are flat, broad, and ugly; their eyes are narrow, rather obliquely placed, and far apart; their noses broad, and their mouth large. Their fingers I observed were in many cases extremely long and thin; only the rich (of both sexes) allow their nails to grow to an extraordinary length, as a proof that they are not obliged, like their poorer brethren, to gain their livelihood by manual labour. These aristocratic nails are generally half an inch long, though I saw one man whose nails were quite an inch in length, but only on his left hand.

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