When a native borrows money he either promises to pay a certain amount of interest for the loan, or he promises and actually allows the lender to have his services for a specified time in lieu of interest. Should the borrower under the first agreement here mentioned, fail to pay the interest he has promised, he then offers his personal services in payment of both interest and capital. If the total sum is large, a lifetime may not be long enough to work off the debt at the native rate of wages, and he so becomes a slave for life. Many people, too, when heavily in debt, sell themselves bodily to someone who will discharge their numerous debts for them. The man who has lost his freedom as the result of financial misfortunes can always re-obtain it if he can in any way obtain sufficient money to pay off his debts. There is nothing cruel or revolting in the treatment of the serfs, and many of them are sincerely attached to their masters, and have been known voluntarily to afford them any assistance they could when misfortunes have overtaken them. They are fed, clothed, and housed at the expense of their owners, and rarely experience in their dependent condition any real hardship. Away in the country the majority of the people prefer to live as the bondservants of some powerful person, who in return for their labour provides both them and their families with protection and support. The _corvée_ laws are also responsible for a certain number of those who are in bondage. When the central authorities claim the services of someone resident in a remote quarter of the country, the order is made through the governor of the province in which the person whose time and labour are required, resides. If this person desires to avoid the requisition, he is often allowed by the local officials to pay a certain sum of money sufficient for the hire or purchase of a substitute. A mark is then tattooed on the wrist of the substitute, and he becomes definitely the property of the government. Now if the "marked" man should die at an early date, an illegal claim is often made for the provision of another proxy, on his wife and children. This claim is in opposition to the law, but has often been made by officials of cruel, arbitrary dispositions. In most cases he who so breaks the law is also the administrator of the law for that district, and if the woman and her children are unable to satisfy the demand for money thus unjustly made, they must become themselves the slaves of the official till they work off the amount required from them. When the boys have grown to such a height that they too may be called upon by the government for _corvée_ or conscription, their master also marks them upon the wrist, and in this way the condition of serfdom is perpetuated from generation to generation. When at a later date the government does actually requisition their services, their owner professes that they are really his own personal property, and he pays