“For days he tracked him about the town, waiting for a favourable opportunity. At last it came, as his rival passed him in the deep embrasure of the Chien-men gate. Springing from his place of concealment he challenged him to fight, but the coward refused. Then Chiang-lo ... drew his knife and repeatedly stabbed him in the heart. When he saw his enemy lying dead at his feet, the apathy of despair fell upon him. Wiping his knife on his sleeve he bowed his head, and turning his steps to the nearest police station calmly gave himself up. A few weeks later he was beheaded.” It is interesting to read that the prevailing method of punishment in China in the seventeenth century differed little from that in force at a very recent date. In the memoirs of the Jesuit Louis le Comte, published in 1698, he says: “They have several ways of inflicting death. Mean and ignoble persons have their heads cut off, for in China the separation of the head from the body is disgraceful. On the contrary, persons of quality are strangled, which among them is a death of more credit.... Rebels and traitors are punished with the utmost severity; that is, to speak as they do, they cut them into ten thousand pieces. For after that the executioner hath tied them to a post, he cuts off the skin all round their forehead which he tears by force till it hangs over their eyes, that they may not see the torments they are to endure. Afterwards he cuts their bodies in what places he thinks fit, and when he is tired of this barbarous employment, he leaves them to the tyranny of their enemies and the insults of the mob.” Cruelty, which is one of the strongest characteristics of the Chinese nature, manifests itself not only in the application of criminal law, but with a peculiar callousness they delight to torture dumb animals and enjoy witnessing the sufferings of children and adults of their own race. A common practice of the professional kidnapper is to blind a child after stealing it, and then carry it away to another town and sell it for a professional beggar. Infant life is still being destroyed by parents in some districts of China, and the abominable custom is difficult to eradicate, as the children are simply abandoned and left to starve, and if the crime is discovered it is difficult to prove deliberate murder. Cases have been known of Chinese boatmen refusing to rescue persons who had thrown themselves overboard from a sinking craft and were drowning, unless they agreed to pay an exorbitant sum asked as the price of rescue. They have even been known to look on passively while their fellow-countrymen were struggling for life in the water, without raising a hand to help them. It is but natural to expect that in a country where such occurrences are common, the punishments inflicted on the really guilty should exceed anything known in the practices of the enlightened nations of to-day. PRISONS OF JAPAN CHAPTER IX ENLIGHTENED METHODS OF JAPAN