like a whole flock of sheep. Their style of dress was this: half a
dozen waistcoats without sleeves, covered with a single overcoat with
extremely long sleeves, falling down to their knees. These garments
made them resemble balls of wool rather than men.

By accident, the party passed first through the quarter of the town
devoted to the restaurants. Here they were for every grade of fortune,
from the millionaire to the ragged poor. The street filled with these
latter was terrible: it swarmed with thousands of beggars, hardly
human in form and almost naked, though there was frozen snow upon the
ground. A group, seeming even joyous, attracted attention. The cause
of their happiness was a dead dog which they had found in one of the
gutters. Even, however, in this degradation the politeness of these
people struck our Frenchmen forcibly. The guests gathered about this
fortuitous repast treated each other with a ceremonious deference
strange enough in such surroundings. In a still lower stratum,
however, among even a more degraded class, whose feasts were
obtained from the live preserves carried upon their own persons, this
politeness, the last quality a Chinaman loses from the degradation of
poverty, was wanting.

A few miles from Shanghai lies Zi-Ka-Wai, a colony founded by the
Jesuits, of which our traveler gives a most interesting account. The
road to Zi-Ka-Wai lay over a sandy plain intersected with canals.
On both sides of the road were hundreds of coffins resting upon the
surface of the ground. In the northern part of China there are no
grave-yards, and the coffins were arranged sometimes in piles in the
fields. It is said that they thus remain until a change takes place
in the reigning dynasty, when they are all destroyed. As the present
dynasty has reigned about three hundred years, the accumulation may be