erywhere, and the 100 workmen for whom pay is drawn never
number on the rare pay days more than sixty persons, a phenomenon
observed in most establishments in China worked by government. Yet with
a foreigner in charge excellent work could be turned out from the
factory. The buildings are spacious, the grounds are ample.

The powder factory is outside the city, near the north-eastern angle of
the wall, but the powder magazine is on some rising ground inside the
city. No guns are stationed anywhere on the walls, though they may be in
concealment in the turrets; but near the small west gate I saw some
small cannon of ancient casting, built on the model of the guns cast by
the Jesuit missionaries in China two centuries ago, if they were not the
actual originals. They were all marked in relief with a cross and the
device I.H.S.--a motto that you would think none but a Chinaman could
select for a weapon designed to destroy men, yet characteristic of this
country of contradictions. "The Chinese statesman," says Wingrove Cooke,
the famous _Times_ correspondent, "cuts off 10,000 heads, and cites a
passage from Mencius about the sanctity of human life. He pockets the
money given him to repair an embankment and thus inundates a province,
and he deplores the land lost to the cultivator of the soil."

Du Halde tells us that "the first Chinese cannon were cast under the
directions of Pere Verbiest in 1682, who blest the cannon, and gave to
each the name of a saint." "A female saint!" says Huc.

Near the arsenal and drill ground there is a large intramural swamp or
reedy lake, the reeds of which have an economic value as wicks for
Chinese candles. Dykes cross the swamp in various directions, and in the
centre there is a well known Taoist Temple, a richly endowed edifice,
with superior gods and censers of great beauty. Where the swamp deepens
into a pond at the margin of the temple, a pretty pavilion has been
built, which is a favourite resort of the Yunnan gentry. The most _chic_
dinner parties in the province are given here. The pond itself swarms
with sacred fish; they are so numerous that when the masses move the
whole pond vibrates. Many merits are gained by feeding the fish, and,
as it happened at the time of my visit that I had no money, I was
constrained to borrow fifteen cash from my chair coolies, with which I
purchased some of the artificial food that women were vending and threw
it to the fish, so that I might add another