than an hour of our journey had passed before we realized that they
were graves and that the country here was perhaps more densely
peopled with the dead than with the living. In so many places there
was the huge father grave, often capped with what in the distance
suggested a chimney, and the many associated smaller ones, that it
was difficult to realize in passing what they were.

It is a common custom, even if the residence has been permanently
changed to some distant province, to take the bodies back for
interment in the family group; and it is this custom which leads to
the practice of choosing a temporary location for the body, waiting
for a favorable opportunity to remove it to the family group. This
is often the occasion for the isolated coffin so frequently seen
under a simple thatch of rice straw, as in Fig. 29; and the many
small stone jars containing skeletons of the dead, or portions of
them, standing singly or in rows in the most unexpected places least
in the way in the crowded fields and gardens, awaiting removal to
the final resting place. It is this custom, too, I am told, which
has led to placing a large quantity of caustic lime in the bottom of
the casket, on which the body rests, this acting as an effective
absorbent.

It is the custom in some parts of China, if not in all, to
periodically restore the mounds, maintaining their height and size,
as is seen in the next two illustrations, and to decorate these once
in the year with flying streamers of colored paper, the remnants of
which may be seen in both Figs. 30 and 31, set there as tokens that
the paper money has been burned upon them and its essence sent up in
the smoke for the maintenance of the spirits of their departed
friends. We have our memorial day; they have for centuries observed