Directory_and_Chronicle_1845 — Page 206

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poor people. The respectable part of the population are careful to an extreme of the relics of their departed friends.* * *

In my peregrinations, I called at the mosque, over the entrance to which are engraved on a stone in large characters Hwui-hwui t'áng, i. e. Mohammedan temple. The head priest is a man of a remark- ably benign and intelligent countenance. His air is very gentle- manly. He must be 45 years of age. His figure is slender but tall. His native place is in Shantung, but his ancestors came from Me- dina in Arabia. He himself can read the Arabic scriptures most readily, and talks that language fuently; but of Chinese writing and reading, he is as ignorant as an Englishman in England. This is very surprizing, considering that he can talk it so well, was born and educated in China, and is a minister of religion among the Chi- mese. He laments much that his supporters are so few ;-they do not number more than twenty or thirty families. He took me into the place of worship, which adjoins his apartments. On ascending a Alight of steps,you get under a plain roof, beneath which, on either side, you find a mass of old furniture and agricultural implements covered with dust. The pillars to support the roof are ornamented with sentences out of the Koran. Facing you is an ornamented pair of small doors hung upon the wall, within which the sacred seat is supposed to lie; and on one side is a convenient book-case that contains the Mohammedan scriptures in 24 parts.

He showed me his usual officiating dress, which is simply a white robe with a point- ed turban. Except at religious service, he wears the Chinese habit, and never appears out of doors in his sacred habiliments. They have one day of rest in seven, and keep it on our Thursday. On being asked if I might be permitted to attend any of their services, it was replied, that if their adherents had business on that day they did not trouble themselves to attend service. (Dec. 15th.)

January 10th. The Mobaminedan priest, named on the 15th of last month, brought with him a follower of the prophet, who had recently come to town. This stranger gives very distinct information of a class of religionists in Káifung fú !, the capital of Ho- mán, his native province, who from his description resemble the Jews. He says, they refrain from eating the sinew which is upon the hol- low of the thigh,' and they do not touch the blood of animals. He recognized the Hebrew letters as those used in their sacred writings, and could trace, in the sound of Hebrew characters, a connection with words which he had heard them utter. The testimony of this

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