the _Ling chi_; but it is dreaded, not
because of any torture associated with its performance, but because of
the dismemberment practised upon the body which was received whole from
its parents. The mutilation is ghastly and excites our horror as an
example of barbarian cruelty: but it is not cruel, and need not excite
our horror, since the mutilation is done, not before death, but after.
The method is simply the following, which I give as I received it
first-hand from an eye-witness:--The prisoner is tied to a rude cross:
he is invariably deeply under the influence of opium. The executioner,
standing before him, with a sharp sword makes two quick incisions above
the eyebrows, and draws down the portion of skin over each eye, then he
makes two more quick incisions across the breast, and in the next moment
he pierces the heart, and death is instantaneous. Then he cuts the body
in pieces; and the degradation consists in the fragmentary shape in
which the prisoner has to appear in heaven. As a missionary said to me:
"He can't lie out that he got there properly when he carries with him
such damning evidence to the contrary."

[Illustration: THE DESCENT TO THE RIVER MEKONG.]

In China immense power is given to the husband over the body of his
wife, and it seems as if the tendency in England were to approximate to
the Chinese custom. Is it not a fact that, if a husband in England
brutally maltreats his wife, kicks her senseless, and disfigures her for
life, the average English bench of unpaid magistrates will find
extenuating circumstances in the fact of his being the husband, and will
rarely sentence him to more than a month or two's hard labour?

CHAPTER XIX.

THE MEKONG AND SALWEEN RIVERS--HOW TO TRAVEL IN CHINA.

To-day, May 7th, we crossed the River Mekong, even at this distance from
Siam a broad and swift stream. The river flows into the light from a
dark and gloomy gorge, takes a sharp bend, and rolls on between the
mountains. Where it issues from the gorge a suspension bridge has been
stretched across the stream. A wonderful pathway zigzags down the face
of the mountain to the river, in an almost vertical incline of 2000ft.
At the riverside an embankment of dressed stone, built up from the rock,
leads for some hundreds of feet along the bank, where there would
otherwise have been no foothold, to the clearing by the bridge. The
likin-barrier is here, and a teahouse or two, and the guardian temple.
The brid