We turn and turn again, and by a sinuous road we enter into a country of tombs. Not, indeed, that they were not everywhere, because our steps since our departure have been accompanied by them. The evening star, like a saint praying in solitude, sees the sun disappear beneath her under the deep and diaphanous waters. The funereal region that we scan in the pallid light of a dreary, waning day, is covered with a rude and yellow growth like the pelt of a tiger. From the base to the ridge are hillocks between which our road winds; and, on the opposite side of the valley, as far as the eye can reach, are mountains burrowed like a rabbit-warren with tombs. In China death holds as great a place as life. As soon as they have gone the dead become more important and more to be suspected, enduring as morose and malevolent powers whom it is well to conciliate. The bonds between the living and the dead are broken with difficulty. The rites continue and are perpetuated. The living must go frequently to the family tomb. They burn incense, fire off crackers, and offer rice and pork. In the shape of a scrap of paper they leave a visiting-card held in place with a pebble. The dead in their thick coffins rest a long time inside the house. Then they are carried out of doors and piled up in low sheds, until the geomancer has found the proper site and location. Then the final resting-place is determined on with great particularity, for fear that the dissatisfied spirits should wander elsewhere. They cut the tombs in the sides of mountains, in the solid and primordial earth; and, while the living, in unhappy multitudes, are crowded in valley-bottoms, in low and malarial plains, the dead open their dwellings to sun and space in high and airy places.