of water used for both bathing and drinking by the multitude, and the prevalent mortuary customs, are also large counts in this indictment of polluted India.1 The result is disease and suffering to an extent distressing to contemplate. A missionary writes: "In some villages [of Ceylon], chiefly owing to the filth and immorality of the people, there is hardly a home free from a painful kind of sickness. In one of the new village schools, out of sixty children present only two were free from sickness." 2

The British Government in India is making heroic efforts to remedy these evils. Sanitary Boards are established and proper provisions for public health are being pushed as rapidly as pos

Government to intro

sible. In the Blue Book for 1894-95, on "The The efforts of the British Moral and Material Progress and Condition of duce proper sanitation. India," interesting details are given as to the sani

tary undertakings now in progress, which consist chiefly in providing pure water-supply for cities, in establishing sewerage schemes, in devis ing rules and regulations with reference to drainage, in the prohibiting of offensive and dangerous nuisances, and disseminating the knowledge of sanitary rules among the populace. The work of the sanitary engineering department is important, and the introduction of the "Village Sanitation Act" is reported in hundreds of villages. Many costly and splendid plants for the water-supply of important cities and towns are referred to as having been completed, as in Cawnpore, Lucknow, Delhi, and smaller places, with a high-level reservoir in Rangoon. Others are reported as in progress throughout the British provinces, with important drainage schemes; yet, with all the care and oversight which the British Government can give this stupendous task, the statistics as to the deathrate and the fatalities from various diseases tell with painful emphasis

1 "Sanitation is sadly neglected. In many villages the streets are horribly filthy, and almost all the approaches are foul and fetid, especially in the morning before the pigs and buffaloes have been round to act as scavengers. While the Mohammedans are careful of the graves of their people, the Hindus who bury are very careless of them. A Hindu graveyard is frequently a ghastly sight, as corpses are laid so near the surface of the ground that the graves are easily rifled by jackals and hyenas. During the prevalence of a bad cholera epidemic the condition of some graveyards is indescribable. Though Hindus are in theory very particular about the water they use, they concern themselves in practice with little more than ceremonial purity and are often very careless as to the condition of their wells. In some places I have seen Brahmans washing themselves and their clothes in wells from which the villagers obtained their drinking water."-Rev. W. Howard Campbell, M.A. (L. M. S.), Cuddapah, Madras, India. Cf. also Sanitary Reform in India," pp. 7-10.

2 Work and Workers in the Mission Field, May, 1895, p. 209.

how much there is still to be done. The year 1894 was marked by an exceptionally high death-rate, as the following figures reveal: from dysentery and diarrhoea, 257,808 deaths, as against 196,667 in 1893; from cholera, 521,647, being in the ratio of 2.44 per 1000 of population, as against 216,827 in 1893; from fever, 4,952,328, equal to 23.23 per 1000, as compared with 3,716,926, or 17.44 in 1893. The total number of successful vaccinations during 1894-95 amounted to 6,869,271. The result of this precautionary measure was that the deaths reported from smallpox were only 41,604, representing a ratio of 0.19 per 1000.1 The condition of the Native States, and of Farther India, including Assam, is even less sanitary than that of British India.

Malodorous China.

China is notorious for the entire neglect of proper sanitation. There is even a lively rivalry among its most important cities as to which deserves the prize for surpassing filthiness.3 Peking, the capital, seems to be by no means an unworthy candidate for the highest laurels in the contest, and has even been pronounced by competent judges as the dirtiest city on the face of the globe. Mr. Curzon's description of an entrance into the Chinese capital is graphic in its realism.5 "Above all other characteristics of Peking," says Mr. Norman, "one thing stands out in horrible prominence. Not to mention it would be wilfully to omit the most striking feature of the place. I mean its filth. It is the most horribly and indescribably filthy place that can be imagined; indeed, imagination must fall far short of the fact. Some of the daily sights of the pedestrian in Peking

1 Cf. "Statement of the Moral and Material Progress and Condition of India During the Year 1894-95," pp. 19–23.

2 "In heathen villages the condition of their homes is still much as it was a hundred years ago, when Father Sangermano described them as a scene of confusion and dirtiness. While cooking meals the rice-water is poured down through the bamboo floors, and this, with all sorts of filth and rubbish collecting and putrefying, produces a stench that is truly nauseating. Itch in its most revolting development is very common here, while in some sections lepers are quite numerous. The chil. dren are allowed to run about naked until they are from six to ten years of age. When cholera or other infectious or contagious disease appears, the fatality is often appalling."- Rev. F. H. Eveleth (A. B. M. U.), Sandoway, Burma.

3 Smith, "Chinese Characteristics," p. 138.

4 "The insanitary conditions here are such that it would never do for me to write a description of them, or if I wrote it, you would never care to present it to an audience. What I see, hear, and smell as I go along the street, with my wife or a lady friend walking with me, neither you nor I would dare to speak of before an American assembly."-Rev. Isaac T. Headland (M. E. M. S.), Peking, China. 5 Curzon, "Problems of the Far East," p. 245.

could hardly be more than hinted at by one man to another in the disinfecting atmosphere of a smoking-room."1 We forbear to finish the paragraph. If all this can be said of the capital of the empire, what must be the state of things (if, indeed, there is any possibility of anything worse) throughout the thronging cities, towns, and thickly populated provinces of the great imperial cloaca of the Chinese Empire! In fact, the attempt to describe the sanitary state of China seems to exhaust the linguistic capacities of all who undertake it. The impression which one has in reading their struggling efforts is that the reality is literally beyond description. We are not surprised, therefore, to hear of the recent plague and its awful ravages in Chinese cities, and yet the lesson seems to be quite lost.3 Dr. S. Wells Williams has described in several places his impressions of the noisome and reeking aspects of Chinese cities. The testimony in private letters from residents of the country indicates that the China of to-day is no improvement upon the China of the past.5 Japan is perhaps the cleanest country in Asia, yet at the opposite extreme of nauseating defilement is its neighbor Korea.

This repulsive story of slovenly sanitation could be continued with dismal monotony as descriptive of the status in all purely Asiatic countries. In fact, the annual threat of cholera which comes in connection with the pilgrimage to Mecca, and gathers sufficient cumulative power to throw a shadow of danger over all Europe, is a sharp reminder of the

1 Norman, "The Peoples and Politics of the Far East," pp. 209, 210. 2 "The Records of the Shanghai Conference, 1890," pp. 269, 270.

"Since the plague, which carried off so many tens of thousands, one would have supposed that the decaying piles of rubbish would have been removed from the But not a shovelful has been taken away, so far as one can judge."-Dr.

streets.

Mary H. Fulton (P. B. F. M. N.), Canton, China.

"The Middle Kingdom," vol. i., pp. 108, 205.

5 "The Chinese will never be a clean people till they become a Christian people. Superstition keeps the walls of the home black and grimy with the smoke of generations, because white is an unlucky color, and hence there is little whitewashing indoors. Superstition peoples the house with evil spirits, and too much displacing of furniture and sweeping of corners is disturbing and worrying to the spirits, and bound to be followed with evil results. No public sanitation will ever be undertaken until Christian unselfishness takes hold of the Chinese. Now it is every man for himself. He casts the dirt out of his home or yard and throws it on the common highway. Who cares if others are inconvenienced or injured by it?”—Rev. J. G. Fagg (Ref. C. A.), Amoy, China.

"Your enquiry as to sanitary conditions is amusing to one who has lived for more than thirty years in a land where sanitation is unknown. The narrow, densely crowded streets and courts of this city; its moat, the convenient receptacle of all manner of abominations, emptied once a year just at the season when most harm can be done by the process; the fetid pools, whose stench fills the air during the