We were sitting in a small, low-roofed hut, the missionary and I, and round us were gathered a number of small boys, dirty and ragged, but with faces bright and merry as they looked with wondering eyes at the two foreigners having their evening meal. Behind the chattering children stood a row of men, local hunters for the most part, whose interest in what was going on was not a whit less than theirs, and behind the men, peeping in at the diminutive windows and the doorless porch, were the giggling women and girls of the little homestead. The hut, which formed one flank of a small square court, contained but one room, whose floor was of hardened mud, whose rafters were black with the soot of ages, and hung with long cobwebs, and whose whole appearance bespoke poverty, the poverty of the lowly Chinese husbandman.
A table occupied the centre of the room, and two rickety stools
modation. Our camp beds, the provider us with seating accom-only part of our outfit which could in anyway come under the heading of luxuries, stood side by side at one end of the room, a small portable stove that smoked abommably, and a litter of pots, pans, store boxes, and the like, marked the other end as our impromptu kitchen. The meal we ate consisted of rice, some fried vegetables, and salted jellyfish. Fortunately we had a good pot of tea, for there is nothing like tea when you are hot and tired after a long day's hunt in the hills and jungle of such a country as that which Ties to the south of Foochow in the province of Fukien.
Food, however, was of very minor importance at the moment, for we were all busy discussing matters to do with the chase, and where in the world will you find a party of men just in from a hunt whose interests are not centred upon the discussion of the day's doings rather than upon the food set before them.
SoMerHine SUPERNATURAL.
The missionary was holding forth at some length upon the subject of cats—big cats, little cats, civet cats, and pencil cats. tigers, leopards, clouded cats, and jungle cats. It must be understood that the Fukienese hunter refers to most of the smaller carnivora that abound in the jungles of that province as some form or other of cat, quite regardless of their form, colour, dentition, or any other refinement of differentiation demanded by the mere zoologist. Civets, mongooses, minks, martens, badgers, raccoon dogs—they are all cats to him, and it is only when he comes to wolves, foxes, hill-dogs, and the red wild dog that he admits of the possibility of some other family being involved. As a matter of fact we had been hunting tigers, and had located a|_ couple of these great felines in a neighbouring ravine. Their depredations during the past few days had included a cow, @ youn, bullock, and a hunting dog ani We were anxious to lay them low. To the Chinese mind there is always something supernatural about the tiger, and it was discussing this point that led the conversation, by easy and natural stages, to the question as to when ther other animals were similarly endowed with powers beyond the field of human ken.
Said an old hunter, a particular. ly dirty, unintelligent being with a cast in one eye and a twisted face, "T know a hill where all the cats are ghosts. You sec them, and fire at them with your gun, but you can never kill them. They are great spirits, and when you fire they vanish." _The missionary snorted in derision, but immediately the other hunters joined in in a chorus, vouching for the truth of old Squint Eye's statement.
"Tt is quite true," said they, "we have often hunted on that hill and always we have put up many cats, but never once have we Killed one, not even the best of our gun hands. They just disappear into the ground.'"
This was too much for my friend, and he at once began telling the hunters what fools they were to cheve in such rubbish. They in their turn waxed warm over the discussion, old Squint Eye becoming positively contemptuous of the fool foreigners who did not believe in such obvious realities as ghost cats.
"Why" said he "not even your foreign guns could kill one of those cats. They are devil cats, T tell you."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.