The punishments for crimes are very severe, many are brutal. They transport and flog for petty larceny, use torture to extort confessions ; use cages, the cangue, and fetters ; chain the criminal to heavy stones and to iron bars ; leave the food supply to chance ; cut off the ear, or cut the person to pieces at 8, 24, 30, 72, and 120 cuts ; decapitate and strangle. The prisons of China may he considered as unequalled upon earth, so far as everything that is most abominable is concerned.
Races.—The great races in the empire are three, the Chinese, the Mongol, and the Manchu. These nations differ very considerably in their physical characters, although much mixture has taken place. The northern or predominant nation appears to have a fundamental tendency to an Iranian modification of the Turanian type ; and the same tendency is observable amongst the Coreans and the higher classes of the Japanese, as amongst some of the American, Tangusian, and Asianesian peoples. In the south of China, the fundamental tendency is to an extreme flatness of features, the nose being often more insignificant and shapeless than in any other race, although the finer type also occurs. In the eastern maritime province, the northern type is much more common. The dominant or northern Chinese race is much less Mongolian than the S. Chinese, the Malay, and most of the intermediate ultra-Indian races. They are closely allied to the Japanese and Americans, and, indeed, are evi dently the same race, however much their language differs. The predominating colour of the skin of the Chinese is yellow ; but yellow, brown, and sometimes a maroon tint occur. The face is broad and flat, cheek-bones projecting, irides black, eyes oblique, beard scanty, stature above that of the Malay and Tibetan, below that of the European. The Chinese head, when viewed from the front, has a strongly-marked physical relation not only to all the races of the Mongolian type, but in a much closer or more special manner to the Tibetan tribes, the American Indians, and some of the eastern Asianesian tribes, in all which one of the prevailing Chinese types may be traced. Numerous examples of the elongated head, obtusely wedge shaped cranium, and arched nose of America and New Zealand may be seen in every assemblage of Chinese in Singapore. The occipital truncation remarked in America and Polynesia is common in South-Eastern Asia. It is very strongly marked in the Lau race. The Tibetan tribes have the rise of the skull at the coronal region, but the other characteristics are wanting. The heads of the American men of Dr. Prichard's Natural History of Man resemble those of the Chinese. The prominent lateral expansion of the zygomm is comparatively rare in the Chinese as in the Americans. The Sumatra Malays have much
more frequently the typical Mongolian head, as have also the allied tribes of the Irawadi basin, with whom they are most nearly connected, and whence they have undoubtedly derived their physical stock.
The sea-coast people are skilful and enterpris ing, with that self-reliance which enables nations to emigrate ; and we find them swarming in the Malay ports, in Singapore, Borneo, and the Philippines ; numbers are in Australia, the West Indies, Sandwich Islands, and Western America, particularly California. But, except in Buddhist Burma, they are not settlers, only forming tem porary connections, sending all their savings, and looking forward to return, to their native land. Next to the Malay, this people have been the most formidable pirates of the eastern seas. Their rapid and wide diffusion is one of the most remark able of the events of modern history, and is likely to exercise a great influence on the future con dition of man. For the Chinese do not migrate to mingle with and be absorbed among other tribes and peoples : they preserve their own lan guage, their one nationality, their own costume and religious usages, their own traditions, habits, and social organization. Though they intermarry with the races among whom they dwell, the Chinese type becomes predominant, and the children are almost invariably educated on the father's model, the influence of the mother seeming almost annihilated. And though the Chinese frequently acquire large fortunes, great influence, and some times high rank as a consequence of their pro sperity, the ties that bind them to their country seem never to be broken, and the tides of popula tion flow Chinaward with every south-western monsoon, to be replaced by a stronger stream when the monsoon of the north-east sends the junks on their wonted way towards the south. It is estimated that in the kingdom of Siam there are more than a million and a half of Chinese settlers ; in the city of Bangkok alone there are supposed to be two hundred thousand. In fact, all the active business appears to be in their hands. Nine out of ten of the floating bazars which cover for miles the two banks of the Meinam, are occupied by Chinamen ; very many of them are married to Siamese women, for a Chinawoman scarcely ever leaves her country. But the children are invariably educated to the Chinese type ; the tail is cultivated if it be a boy, and the father alone seems to model the child's nature and education. Yet that strong parental affection which has been remarked as one of the characteristic virtues of the Chinese, is almost invariably exhibited. Fathers are con stantly playing with and carrying about their children, encouraging their gambols, and teaching them to observe.