Note 474 — NIGHT-WATCH.

Martini Atlas Sinens. p. 17. Matches or links, to which alarums are sometimes added, are employed in China to point out the hours; and these are announced by watchmen placed on towers who beat a drum. See Kæmpfer’s Japan, where the mention of matches is omitted. Thunberg says, “Time is measured here not by clocks or hour-glasses, but by burning matches, which are plaited like ropes, and have knots on them. When the match burns to a knot, which marks a particular lapse of time, the hour is announced, during the day, by a certain number of strokes on the bells in the temples; and in the night by watchmen who go round and give a like signal with two pieces of board, which they knock against each other.”