[Footnote 157:  The reader may turn to our account of Anson’s voyage for some particulars respecting their taste.  Indeed, in almost every voyage he will find abundantly disgusting information of this singularly unamiable people.  It is but fair, however, to allow them credit for one of the virtues of necessity.  Their capability of subsisting on such food as others reject, is a very requisite part of education in their own country, where the danger of famine is so great and frequent.—­E.]

The Chinese have a singular superstition with regard to the burial of their dead; for they will upon no occasion open the ground a second time where a body has been interred.  Their burying-grounds, therefore, in the neighbourhood of Batavia, cover many hundred acres, and the Dutch, grudging the waste of so much land, will not sell any for this purpose but at the most exorbitant price.  The Chinese, however, contrive to raise the purchase-money, and afford another instance of the folly and weakness of human nature, in transferring a regard for the living to the dead, and making that the object of solicitude and expence, which cannot receive the least benefit from either.  Under the influence of this universal prejudice, they take an uncommon method to preserve the body entire, and prevent the remains of it from being mixed with the earth that surrounds it.  They enclose it in a large thick coffin of wood, not made of planks joined together, but hollowed out of the solid timber like a canoe; this being covered, and let down into the grave, is surrounded with a coat of their mortar, called chinam, about eight or ten inches thick, which in a short time becomes as hard as a stone.  The relations of the deceased attend the funeral ceremony, with a considerable number of women that are hired to weep:  It might reasonably be supposed that the hired appearance of sorrow could no more flatter the living than benefit the dead, yet the appearance of sorrow is known to be hired among people much more reflective and enlightened than the Chinese.  In Batavia, the law requires that every man should be buried according to his rank, which is in no case dispensed with; so that if the deceased has not left sufficient to pay his debts, an officer takes an inventory of what was in his possession when he died, and out of the produce buries him in the manner prescribed, leaving only the overplus to his creditors.  Thus in many instances are the living sacrificed to the dead, and money that should discharge a debt, or feed an orphan, lavished in idle processions, or materials that are deposited in the earth to rot.[158]

[Footnote 158:  Their veneration for the dead is certainly excessive, and by no means in unison with the rest of their character, which seems to be made up of the grossest selfishness, avarice, and apathy.  They often visit the graves of their friends, strew flowers around them, and when they leave them, deposit presents and sundry articles of provisions, which, of course, are soon removed, though not by the dead.  In this, respect, then, it is very obvious that their mourning may not be quite useless to the living.—­E.]