1850.
Pagodas in and near Canton.
539
“' The Shih Lễ (Stone Whetstone) hill is about a li east of Golden Goose hill; it is 2000 cubits or so high, 10) li broad each way, and surrounded by water, which runs by it on each side, this hill rising abruptly in the centre. Below it is the Sea of Lions, and on its east is a stone precipice, rising high and steep, which resembles a lion in its form; in its bosom is a cave in which six or seven men can be seated, and a rill runs many hundred feet down it; this hill thus forms the defense of the Bogne. At this place there is a cliff called Kin-láng, or the Variegated Porch, because it can be paced along like a corridor for a hundred paces or more, and visitors go there and sit, sometimes getting their garments wet by the spray of the streamlet. The geomancers say that it is by five [hills like] beasts which here lock up and obstruct the flow of the waters, that the great sea is warded off from the entrance-a circumstance of great importance to the good luck of the capital. In the time of the Ming dynasty, Páng and Koh, two scholars in the district of Nánhái, took upon then to require rental of this hill, and invited traders to come and cut stone, which wounded the pulse of the ground, and caused sorrow and evil to the literary people around. In the year 1566, five küjin of the district, named Li, Liú, Lin, Liáng, and Tsui petitioned the government to prohibit the quarrying of stone, and then they erected a pogoda of nine stories on the summit, called Shih-l
or Stone Whetstone pagoda; it is situated below Whampoa I. and above Tiger I. In the days of Kánghỉ, when the coast-people were removed into the interior, this place was fixed on as a limit, and a brick citadel was accordingly erected on the boundary line, with a camp and signal-fire tumuli; it is now called the Lien-hwá ching, or Lily Flower citadel. Since the second year of Tsungching, in A.D. 1630, for a period of a hundred and more years, the quarries in this hill had been repeatedly opened and shut up; but latterly miscreants of the place in combination with the traitorous merchant Láu, surreptitiously got stone there as they pleased, the underlings of government receiving bribes therefor, and preventing any one from interfering-thus making the leak in the dam still wider. But in the 29th year of Kienlung, A.D. 1765, Doctor Ling and others petitioned their excellencies the provincial officers, who ordered two tablets to be erected, one in the citadel on the bill and the other in the literary chancellor's office in Canton, prohibiting stone to be taken from the quarries.'
"From this it appears that this ruin is connected with one of the strangest freaks of despotism recorded in Chinese annals—that of ordering all the inhabitants of the coast to remove thirty miles into the interior to escape the ravages of a pirate from whom the imperial forces could not protect them. This event happened about 1665, so that this wall has stood not far from 180 years; not a vestige of the fire tumuli spoken of are to be seen, nor did we find the tablet ordering the quarries to be shut up, though perhaps a little search might bring it to light. The area inclosed by this wall is a few square