In this, the sixth Court, presided over, like all the others, by a judge, and furnished with all the necessary means and appliances for carrying out the sentences, there are sixteen different wards where different punishments are applied according to the gravity of the offence. The wicked shade may be sentenced to kneel for long periods on iron shot, or to be placed up to the neck in filth, or pounded till the blood runs out, or to have the mouth forced open with iron pincers and filled with needles, or to be bitten by rats, or nipped by locusts while in a net of thorns, or have the heart scratched, or be chopped in two at the waist, or have the skin of the body torn off and rolled up into spills for lighting pipes, etc. Similar punishments are awarded for other crimes; and these are to be seen depicted on the walls of the municipal temple, to be found in every large city, and appropriately named the Chamber of Horrors. It is doubtful if such ghastly representations of what is to be expected in the next world have really any deterrent effect upon even the most illiterate of the masses; certainly not so long as health is present and things are generally going well. "The devil a monk" will any Chinaman be when the conditions of life are satisfactory to him. As has already been stated, his temperament is not a religious one; and even the seductions and threats of Buddhism leave him to a great extent unmoved. He is perhaps chiefly influenced by the Buddhist menace of rebirth, possibly as a woman, or worse still as an animal. Belief in such a contingency may act as a mild deterrent under a variety of circumstances; it certainly tends to soften his treatment of domestic animals. Not only because he may some day become one himself, but also because among the mules or donkeys which he has to coerce through long spells of exhausting toil, he may be unwittingly belabouring some friend or acquaintance, or even a member of his own particular family. This belief in rebirth is greatly strengthened by a large number of recorded instances of persons who could recall events which had happened in their own previous state of existence, and whose statements were capable of verification. Occasionally, people would accurately describe places and buildings which they could not have visited, while many would entertain a dim consciousness of scenes, sights and sounds, which seemed to belong to some other than the present life. There is a record of one man who could remember having been a horse, and who vividly recalled the pain he had suffered when riders dug their knees hard into his sides. This, too, in spite of the administration in Purgatory of a cup of forgetfulness, specially designed to prevent in those about to reborn any remembrance of life during a previous birth.