A PLACE WHERE THE HOG IS A BLESSING.
THE following, which we take from the Phrenological Journal, presents a field in which the hog may pursue his legitimate calling, that of scavenger:— United States Consul Bedloe, writing to the Practitioner from Amoy, China, says that city bears the unenviable reputation of being the dirtiest city on the globe—a reputation thoroughly deserved. The city is built on the edge of a mountainous island, and is exceedingly old. Inscriptions on ancient tombs run back as far as the beginning of the Christian era, and coins found in accidentally discovered graves date to dynasties from 500 to 1000 B.C. During all this period the hillsides of the city have been used as burying grounds. As the population increased, the houses encroached upon the cemetery land, until finally the two became hopelessly intermixed. The United States Consulate is surrounded by over a hundred tombs, and a score of the large blocks of granite used in and about it are old tombstones. On the hill immediately behind the residence of F. Malcampo, Esq., the graves touch one another at every point and form a solid white surface of rock, brick, porcelain, and cement, covering more than a million square feet. Near the Lam paw-do Joss house 30,000 bodies are said to have been buried vertically to save space. They lie, or stand, in a plot of land of as many square feet. Amoy proper and its suburbs have a living population of about one million, and a dead one of four and a half times as many. The wells are shallow, and are sunk on the edges of the graveyards and even among the tombs themselves. The city is walled the same as it was in the time of Confucius. It has no sewers whatever. The streets vary from two to six feet in width; no wheeled vehicles can use them. An equestrian would experience great difficulty in turning a corner. Here and there is an open space or plaza, dug out so as to be a huge open cesspool. Into it the streets discharge their filth and the house servants the refuse of their houses. Nothing goes to waste in China. The decomposing ooze, no one171knows how deep, is used for growing onions, water cress, water lilies, and other edible plants. Under a hot tropical sun their growth is marvelous. All garbage and offal is thrown into the yard for the pigs. What these omnivorous quadrupeds refuse is thrown into the streets and lies there until washed away by the rain or carried onward by the feet of the traveling multitude. The amount of street dirt found in this way is very great, and its nature very offensive and foul smelling. It accumulates in angles and no-thoroughfares. Where it settles it is always being rooted up by pigs and scratched over and into by pariah dogs. It should be said in justice to these two animals that they are excellent scavengers and devour almost everything. The pigs are simply invaluable, consuming even human fecal matter and urine. Without them the population would be swept away in thirty days.