The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-07-14
SUPERSTITION SAVES COAL.
It Lies in China and Near the Coast,
 X But is Not Mined.

London Chronicle.
 Because of superstition -one of the richest coal beds in the world lies un- worked. This will not be the case long after the great powers have par titioned China. for the mine lies near the city of Annoy in that unfortunate country, and It may be imagined that modern greed will not hesitate to go after the coal.
 Fengshui comes with birth and is never ending. It attends every inn portant act and combines the functions of fortune, fate and destiny. One may spirit favors it. It sets the time for marriage. and it must be propiated be- fore burial.
 The compound is made of words that mean wind and water, or that which cannot be seen and that which cannot be grasped. No amount of speculation or research by foreign inquiries has resulted in making much more of it than this definition. Since 1t thus symbolizes what the human mind can- not easily comprehend the Chinese not only accept 1t without question, but as reality pertaining to their own life and governing it.
 Annoy needs little fuel except for cooking, but the supply hardly satisfies the most sparing use of wood. In some places women and children by hundreds find means of livelihood by gathering stems, sticks and leaves, and in digging for roots. which will always bring good prices in copper cash. The work has become almost an industry in the adjoining province. where the searchers for fuel trudge miles for it daily. On the way to the hills where they gather 1t they have made path which has become so worn that it ex- poses coal bed along most its entire length. Outcroppings elsewhere in the same section show coal at hand over a vast area, ready for use lad to be gathered at infinitely less trouble than the wood obtained from the hills.
 But doctors have declared that there must be no disturbance of the coal beds. The people bow, as If to an in- spired law. It Is permitted to deforest some of the hills for fuel, and they are kept continually stripped by the thou eands who make a living by gathering wood and carrying 1t back to the set dement's. The spirits generated by the wind and water and which occupy and upon toiling millions. who bear it patiently and without complaint.
 It Is an essential purpose of Fen gshui to preserve the harmonies of nature. It aims at placid conditions. The welfare of the people is best to be served. so far as anything approach ing philosophy enters into this sort of calculation, by leaving things as they elweys have been in order that the spirits of earth and air may for ever move in the currents to which they have become accustomed so that there may be no distraction or annoy ance to provoke or ruffle them. If they are driven out of their course through human agency. the penalty Is exactsd in human suffering.
 Hence all possible precaution is taken to avoid that which will disturb them, and the interpreters of Fengshui must be consulted on every occasion. It may well be that the high regard which the Chinese have for precedent. their intense conservatism, and the quality of self satisfa ction which enables them to feel superior to the outside affairs or even to their own mishaps Is en- gendered by the faith that makes them fatalists