In social matters it is easy to conceive how two such discordant elements as the Chinese and Musselmans live together. Warm friendly relations seem, under the circumstances, impossible; but I fancy that I can discern, nevertheless, that no peculiar animosity exists between the two classes. The Chinese, who are the minority, never allow the Tartars to feel that they are rulers, and the authorities distinguish themselves by the greatest impartiality. As conversion to the dominant religion is singularly displeasing to the Chinese, it is not surprising that their efforts carefully tend not only to make the Musselmans exact in the performance of their religious duties, but to punish severely those who, in this respect, offend. Does a Musselman omit to pray, the Chinese are wont to say {405} to him, 'Behold how ungrateful thou art; we have some hundreds of gods, and, nevertheless, we satisfy them all. Thou pretendest to have but one God, and yet that one thou canst not content!' Even the Mollahs, as I often had occasion to observe, extol the conscientiousness of the Chinese officials, although they deal with their religion in the most unsparing terms. So, also, the Tartars are never tired of praising the art and cleverness of their rulers, and there is no end to their laudatory strains when they once begin to speak upon the subject of the power of the Djong Kafir (great unbelievers), i.e., the genuine Chinese. [Footnote 149] [Footnote 149: The taking of Pekin by the Anglo-French army has not remained hidden from them. When I asked Hadji Bilal, how that was reconcilable with the boasted omnipotence of the Chinese, he observed, that the Frenghis had employed cunning, and had begun by stupefying all the inhabitants of Pekin with opium, and then had naturally and easily made their way into the slumbering city.] And is it not again most astonishing that all the followers of Islamism, including those who are farthest to the west, as well as those to be found on its most distant eastern boundaries, whether Turks, Arabs, Persians, Tartars, or Özbegs, ridicule and mock at their own faults just in the same degree as they praise and extol the virtues and merits of the nations not Mohammedan? This is the account I heard everywhere. They admit that taste for the arts, humanity, and unexampled love of justice are attributes of the Kafir (unbelievers), and yet you hear them, with their eyes glancing fire, using an expression like that attributed to a Frenchman, after the battle of Rosbach, 'God be praised that I am a Musselman! [Footnote 150] [Footnote 150: 'El hamdü lilla ena Müszlim.'] {406} _(c. ) Cities._