them. They believe that the spirits cannot turn a corner, but
must move in a straight line. Accordingly, in China you do
not often find one window opposite another window, lest the
spirits may pass through. You will seldom find a straight
road from one village to another village, but only a distractingly
circuitous path, while the roads are not only crooked, but
so atrociously bad that it is difficult for the foreign traveller to
keep his temper. The Chinese do not count their own inconvenience
if they can only baffle their demoniac foes. It is the
custom of the Chinese to bury their dead wherever a geomancer
indicates a ``lucky'' place. So particular are they about
this that the bodies of the wealthy are often kept for a considerable
period while a suitable place of interment is being
found. In Canton there is a spacious enclosure where the
coffins sometimes lie for years, each in a room more or less
elaborate according to the taste or ability of the family. The
place once chosen immediately becomes sacred. In a land
which has been so densely populated for thousands of years,
graves are therefore not only innumerable but omnipresent.
In my travels in China, I was hardly ever out of sight of these
conical mounds of the dead, and as a rule I could count hundreds
of them from my shendza.

Every visitor to Canton and Chefoo will recall the hilly
regions just outside of the old city walls that are literally covered
with graves, those of the richer classes being marked by
small stone or brick amphitheatres. Yet these are cemeteries
not because they have been set apart for that purpose, but because
graves have gradually filled all available spaces.