ad, waiting for a fit occasion for interment. Heavy stones were
placed on the lids to keep the dead more securely at rest. The lucky
day for burial would be determined by the priests--it would be
determined by them as soon as the pious relatives had paid sufficiently
for their fears. So long, then, as the coffins remained where they were,
they might be described as capital invested by the priests and returning
heavy interest; removed from the temple, they ceased to be productive.

As is the case in so many temples, there is an opium-room in the temple
at the back of the gilded shrine, where priests and neophytes, throwing
aside their office, can while away the licentious hours till the gong
calls them again to prayers.

In the early morning, while I was still lying in my pukai on the floor,
I saw many women, a large proportion of whom were goitrous, come to the
hall, and make an offering of rice, and kneel down before the Buddha. As
time went on, and more kept coming in, small heaps of rice had collected
in front of the chief altar and before the cabinets. And when the women
retired, a chorister came round and swept with his fingers all the
little heaps into a basket. To the gods the spirit! To the priests the
solid remains!

It was in Manyuen, as I have mentioned, that Margary met his death on
February 21st, 1875. He had safely traversed China from Hankow to Bhamo,
had been everywhere courteously treated by the Chinese and been given
every facility and protection on his journey. He had passed safely
through Manyuen only five weeks before, and had then written: "I come
and go without meeting the slightest rudeness among this charming
people, and they address me with the greatest respect." And yet five
weeks later he was killed on his return! Even assuming that he was
killed in obedience to orders issued by the cruel Viceroy at Yunnan
City, the notorious Tsen Yue-ying, and not by a lawless Chinese
train-band which then infested the district and are believed by Baber to
have been the real murderers, the British Government must still be held
guilty of contributory negligence. Margary, having passed unmolested to
Bhamo, there met the expedition under Colonel Horace Browne, and
returned as its forerunner to prepare for its entry into China by the
route he had just traversed. The expedition was a "peace expedition"
sent by the Government of Burma, and numbered only "fifty persons in
all, together with a Burmese guard of 150