Page 182 of 2651

The subsistence which they find there is so scanty, that they are

eager to fish up the nastiest garbage thrown overboard from any

European ship. Any carrion, the carcase of a dead dog or cat, for

example, though half putrid and stinking, is as welcome to them

as the most wholesome food to the people of other countries.

Marriage is encouraged in China, not by the profitableness of

children, but by the liberty of destroying them. In all great

towns, several are every night exposed in the street, or drowned

like puppies in the water. The performance of this horrid office

is even said to be the avowed business by which some people earn

their subsistence.