The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1895-08-22
A VAST GRAVEYARD.
The Whole of China Tricky Studded
with Mounds of the Dead.

Inc whole or CHINA IEickly studded
with Mounds of the Dead.
The face of all nature is dimpled
with graves No farm is so small that
it cannot afford at least one; no hill is
so high Il speak of the garden PROV
inces of China that it is not dotted
with them to the top. No city lacks
them, within and without its walls;
only the compactest parts of the com
pact cities are without them. They
vary in shape and form, as everything
varies in China. The saving is that
''in ten miles everything is different"
and it certainly is so with the graves.
Near Shanghai this eruption on the
face of nature took the form of shape
less mounds of earth. perhaps six feet
long by three feet wide and three or
four feet high. There the coffins had
been put on the ground and covered
over with dirt. Farther along toward
Soochow and the Grand canal the
graves were brick effairs, Handicapped
and square at the ends. In the other
direction, at and near Cha-pu. on the
coast, they were often vaults of earth
faced with stone and surrounded by
horseshoe or broken circle of earth
work. Some Of these had three door
ways, and looked like triple bake
ovens. But down Cha-pu way many
of the graves were perfect little houses
of brick, with tile roofs, and even
with roofs whose corners were bent up
in grand style There are graveyards
in China, family or village graveyards,
that look like mere disturbances of the
earth, where acres have been turned
up into mounds or covered with brick
ovens,and there are graveyards that are
solemnly planted with rows of trees.
But, as rule, the farmers bury their
dead in their rice or cotton fields or
among their mulberry trees, and the
poor buy or lease resting place for
their departed upon the acres of some
weather. man. don't know whether
it be true or not, but l was told that
the graves are kept, or let alone, until
a change of dynasty occurs, when they
are RACED, and China begins over again
to preempt a great fraction of her sur
face for her dead. If SO, it is time for
a change of dynasty, because a vast
portion of the soil is lost to the farm
ers, who otherwise cultivate almost
every foot of it. And the graves are in
all stages of rack and ruin and dis
order. At one time you see scores of
tombs whose ends have been worn down
by the elements or have fallen out so
as to show the coffin ends or an out
break of skulls and bones. There
L Al
you do not see, even to disclosures of
great earthern jars full of bones where
the original graves and collins have
worn away. There the bones have
been reinterred in pots, and these in
turn have been exposed by the care
less hand of time. You see bare coffins
set out in the rice fields because the
over, and you see tens of thousands Of
collins merely covered over with
matched straw. You see the grand
tombs of mandarins taking up half a
mile of the earth First there are the
granite steps leading to a splendid
triple arch all beautifully carved.
Then follows the stately approach to
the tomb-a wide avenue bordered by
trees and set with lions and warriors,
horses and sages, all hewn out of
stone. Finally the tomb itself, on a
hillside if possible, stares down the
avenue at all these costly ornaments.
But it must be that most of these
monuments are to men long dead
perhaps to men of distant ages
Therefore most Of them are falling to
pieces. Some of them are merely be-
ginning to crumble, some are waste
places with broken suggestions of
what they were, and some have been
invaded bv farmers and by the popu-
lace, with the result that you see por-
tions of the ONCE grand arch set in a
nearby bridge or used as steps to a
waterside tea house.-Julian Ralph, in
Harper's Magazine.