Read Ebook: The attaché at Peking by Redesdale Algernon Bertram Freeman Mitford Baron

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Since I wrote to you last I have neither seen nor done anything worth recording. The thermometer has been standing at from 95? to 107? in our courtyard, so there is not much temptation to go sight-seeing, or even to move outside the Legation; inside, the days are as like as twins. However, there is a bag going to-day, so I must try and patch up a letter.

We are thinking of making a move to the hills next Monday; we have almost decided on a temple called Pi Y?n Ss?, about 12 1/2 miles from this. I shall be very glad to go, for the town is becoming abominably stuffy and hot, and the dust is something beyond belief. We shall probably stay six weeks or two months, coming into Peking on mail days. We are forced to take our whole establishment with us, so it is not worth while going for a shorter time.

We have better news from Shantung. The Imperialist troops have driven back the rebels. There is now no danger of this province being invaded, which might have been a serious thing for us, and certainly would have resulted in the sacking of Tientsing. It is really provoking, after all the pains that have been taken to induce this wretched Government to save itself, which it could easily do by the most ordinary exertion, to see half a dozen archers outside the gates making such practice at a target twenty yards off as any girl of eighteen, member of a toxophilite club at home, would be ashamed of. Yet this is the stuff which the Chinese Government are content to accept as the means of putting down the insurrection. The troops that they are drilling in the European fashion are merely a sop to foreign representatives, and not the evidence of earnest wishes to improve. Self-help and self-improvement seem repugnant to the nature of this belly-patting Buddhist nation. They are willing enough to get foreign officers, especially Englishmen, in whom the example of Colonel Gordon has given them unbounded confidence, to drill and lead their troops; but they will do nothing for themselves; and there is a class of superior officers who, having acquired a certain reputation for valour and military ability among their own people, consider it beneath their dignity to serve under foreign officers. The obstacles which such men throw in the way of the latter, together with the uncertainty of being able to obtain supplies and pay for the troops under their command, render their position intolerable, as Colonel Gordon found on more than one occasion. The English officers who have been lent to instruct the Imperialists have found their way in many instances anything but smooth, and have had great difficulty in carrying out the measures which they deemed necessary. Under these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that the rebels, whose ranks are swelled by the local banditti, secret societies, and Imperialist soldiers mutinous for want of pay, should still show a head.

With this internal difficulty pressing them sorely, the Chinese continue persistently to break their treaty engagements with the Great Powers, any of which, if it were so minded, has a handle for blowing up the whole concern. W?n-Hsiang, who is the chief of the Board of Foreign Affairs , and who is the most advanced and patriotic man in the Government, is fully conscious of the danger of the situation; but unfortunately he is a timid man, and it is one thing to convince a Chinaman, and another to induce him to act upon his conviction. So the treaties continue to be broken, and the existence of the present dynasty in China hangs upon the patience of foreign governments, who have too great a stake in the country to sink the ship so long as there is a hope of her floating.

You will see by the date of this that we have beaten a retreat from the dust, heat, and filth of the city, and that our "villegiatura" has begun. Indeed, Peking was becoming insupportable. The thermometer when we left was standing at 108? in the shade, the highest degree which it has reached for these three years, and I was heartily glad to turn my back upon the Legation gates.

The plain between these hills and the town is very beautiful. It is thickly studded with farmsteads, knolls of trees, and tombs, which are always the prettiest spots in China, for as a balance against the dirt and squalor in which they pass their lives, the Chinese choose the most romantic and delightful places for their final habitations. The soil is wonderfully fertile, and yields two crops in the year, so that usually the plain bears every appearance of prosperity; but this year, owing to the excessive heat and drought, the first crop has failed, and the fields are parched and burnt up. In vain the Emperor prays for rain; it only comes in rare and scanty showers, and the fierce sun bakes the ground harder than ever. The country folk are in great distress, and food is at famine prices. Yet they seem happy and contented, and when we asked one of the priests here whether there was no danger of a famine riot, he answered, "Oh, no! the people about here are too great fools to get up a disturbance." Those that are hardest up will sell their daughters into bondage, and there will be an end of the matter.

Our temple is called "Pi Y?n Ss?," "the temple of the azure clouds," a romantic name, and certainly the place is worthy of it. It is built on terraces ascending the hill to a length of about half a mile, and on every terrace is a shrine, each more beautiful than the last; black and white marble statues and vases, bronze dragons, alto-relievos and basso-relievos representing kings and warriors, gods and goddesses, and fabulous monsters, all of rare workmanship,--inscriptions graven on marble and stone, and bronze or gilt upon wood, meet one at every step; and the whole is set in a nest of rock-work, fountains, woods, and gardens. At the top is a small temple more in the Indian than the Chinese style, and here there is a very curious idol with ten heads, three large ones at the bottom, from which three smaller ones spring, in their turn carrying three lesser ones surmounted by a single very small head. The hands are in proportion. This little place commands a panoramic view over the plain, with the walls and towers of Peking in the distance.

Our habitation consists of several little houses on one side of the temple; we dine in an open pavilion, surrounded by a pond and artificial rockery, with ferns and mosses in profusion; high trees shade it from the sun, and close by us a cold fountain pours out of the rock into the pond, in which we can ice our wine to perfection. The pond was dried up, and the fountain had been turned from its channel, when we arrived; but we got together a few coolies, and soon set that right. Fancy our feelings on coming here, when we were told that if there came no rain we could have no bath! This too in a climate where the hot nights make a morning wash doubly necessary. The priest had hardly said the word, when a tremendous thunderstorm broke over the mountain and set our minds at rest, and next morning we discovered that we could have the most delicious natural bath. Our life here is very simple and very, very dull. We are only two--Saurin and myself. We rise at any hour after daybreak, breakfast at eight, dine at three; after dinner we go for a ride, or a scramble over the mountain, and come home to tea at about eight or nine. We sit smoking our cheroots for perhaps an hour, talking always about home and watching the fire-flies, that, according to Chinese tradition, served as lamps to Confucius and his disciples. A visit from or to the Russian Legation, who have got a temple at about an hour and a half's ride from here, is the only break to the monotony of our daily life. I have my teacher with me here, and work with him at the language from breakfast to dinner; that is my serious occupation, and about as hard a task as one could wish for. I carry about my lessons for the rest of the day written on paper fans--a capital dodge for keeping one's work before one. We are rather bothered by mosquitoes, and a most venomous little insect called the sand-fly, yellow in colour, and smaller than a midge, which is lucky, for if he were of the size of a blue-bottle I should think his bite would be fatal. There are quantities of scorpions too; one of our men was stung the other day. We heard a great wailing and crying one night, for all the world like an Irish wake; next morning our servants told us that the cook's assistant had been stung in the hand, and that he had died in an hour, but that he had come to rights again, and was getting well. This sounded something like being "kilt entirely." The man's presence at the temple illustrates a custom of the country; of course, as is the way of the East, no one can move without a large retinue. There must be a valet for each man, and a groom for each horse, and a man or two to do nothing, and two or three more to look on and see them do it. But besides this, like Thackeray's description of Irishmen and their poor relations, no Chinaman is so poor or mean but what he can find a poorer and a meaner to do part of his work. A coolie earning three dollars a month will pay another one dollar a month to help him, and he in his turn will give a boy a few cash, that he may enjoy his ease and his opium. The man who was stung was the cook's poor relation. Although his brother and the other men supposed him to be dying, and finally to have actually died, they never came and told us, nor did they get any assistance for him. We heard the noise, but one of our servants has a very pretty little talent for tickling a lute, and there was so little difference between the sounds of the wake and those of the concerts he gets up, that we thought the hullabaloo was only a melancholy variety of the latter, so we took no notice of it. As far as Chinese remedies are concerned, better be without them. It is almost impossible to believe the amount of ignorance which exists in China about medicine and surgery. Native doctors, who never dissect, are utterly ignorant for the most part of the position of the heart, the lungs, and the other principal organs. They are ignorant of the difference between arteries and veins, nor do they understand the circulation, looking upon the several pulses of the body as the effects of separate causes. All diseases are attributed by them to their favourite doctrine, "hot and cold influences." They have a certain knowledge of the use of drugs, and of mercury in particular, but their remedy above all others is acupuncture. Some days ago my groom had an attack of diarrhoea, and his medical man pricked him underneath the tongue for it! Sir John Davis tells a story of a doctor who wanted to prick a man for hernia. If in these prickings they cut into an artery, and the man dies, why, so much the worse for him! it is fate. Astrology plays a great part in their medical art, certain planets being supposed to influence certain parts of the body. It is one among many instances in which one sees the analogy between the present condition of China and Europe in the Middle Ages.

We hear bad news of mercantile prospects in the south. Notwithstanding their having been hit so hard last season, the merchants have been speculating again more rashly than ever, and vying with each other in buying up tea. The Chinese are quite up to this, and have leagued together to raise prices. The nearer our merchants have got to the tea-growing districts by means of the opening of new ports, the dearer tea has become. Tea was never so cheap as when Canton was the only outlet to the market. This seems a paradox, but it is easily explained. The merchants competing to buy on the spot have caused the Chinese growers to send up their prices to any height, and the foreigner cannot transport the tea south so cheaply as the native, so that both the original price paid to the farmers, and the cost of transport, have been raised, and the merchants are paying the penalty of their own hunger for new markets.

As a set-off against this bad news, we have good tidings with regard to the rebels, who were in Shantung; they appear to be dispersed, some south and some west, and the capital is safe. For once the Chinese can lay the praise to themselves, they having acted without foreign aid.

I daresay you will be curious to hear something more of our temple life than I have been able to tell you hitherto. We have been exploring the neighbourhood in all directions, and certainly there is plenty to be seen, although all the points of interest are temples, either Buddhist or Taoist, and the description of one might hold good for all. The most curious of these is at a distance from us of about a mile and a half; it is called Wo-Fo-Ss?, "the temple of the Sleeping Buddha," from a huge sleeping idol which it contains, about 20 feet in length. At first I thought the figure was meant for a female, a sort of Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, but the attendant priest assured me that it was meant for Buddha himself. The idol lies sleeping in a huge shrine, surrounded by a number of lesser saints. His slippers, made of softest velvet and satin, are lying at his feet ready for him to put on whenever it shall suit his Holiness to get up; each of his attendants is likewise provided with slippers. He has been sleeping now for more than 700 years, so he brings no great profit to the shoemaking trade. The shrine is held in great reverence, and is decorated with an inscription by the Emperor Chien-Lung himself, who seems never to have lost an opportunity of writing and building; of both these favourite pastimes of his, Wo-Fo-Ss? bears examples, for leading out of one of the courts of the temple is a most beautiful little Imperial abode, now falling into decay, like everything else here, but which once must have been perfectly lovely. Of all the pavilions, courts, rockeries, and shrines, the Lotus Pond alone remains in all its glory. Equally in ruins is an Imperial hunting lodge, close by our temple, standing in the middle of a deer-park which reaches up to the top of the mountain, fenced in by a high wall. This, too, was a favourite resort of Chien-Lung, and he must have spent a king's ransom in decorating it; a gate or two, here and there a summer-house, and one pagoda of yellow and green tiles, show what it must once have been. But the whole place has crumbled to pieces, and the deer and game stray at pleasure through what were once the gorgeous apartments of the Emperor. The yellow tiles here, worked in the highest relief with dragons, griffins, lions, and other emblems, are marvellous specimens of potter's work. Whole pediments are made in small pieces and so cunningly joined together that they look like one block. A very small annual expense would have kept the place in perfect repair; but to keep in repair is not an Asiatic attribute. Alongside one of the paths of the park, which is full of the most delightful resting-places, I noticed the remains of what looked like a number of stalls at a fancy-fair, and on inquiring I found that they were little shops at which it was the privilege of the eunuchs of the palace to sell trinkets and other trifles to the Emperor as he passed with his wives.

Among other things that Chien-Lung did for these temples, he imported from the palace of Jo Hol in Manchuria a quantity of a kind of tree cigala, by Europeans called wee-wees from the noise they make, by the Chinese called Tats?-chi-liao. They are the most curious insects, and make a clatter which is as if it were produced by the metal tongues of an accordion. They go on all day and drive one nearly distracted. Sometimes one can hardly hear oneself speak, but the Chinese delight in them, and my teacher told me the story of their introduction as if he had been speaking of an importation of nightingales. Happily at Peking they declined to flourish; there we have only a lesser and more piano sort, which it is an Imperial amusement at certain times of the year to catch off the trees with long bamboo rods tipped with bird-lime. The Chinese certainly find pleasure in what are to us very disagreeable noises. Fancy a flight of pigeons with Eolian harps tied to their tails! The first time I heard it above my head I thought something dreadful must be going to happen. However, that fancy has a practical side to it, for it keeps off the hawks which abound at Peking.

We have been revelling for two days in the very rare luxury of wet weather. What a pleasure a real rainy day is in this burnt-up climate! a day when the hills look as if they might be Scotch moors, and the temples and pavilions as if they ought to melt away and be replaced by the clubs in Pall Mall. On these wet days we wander about our own place, of the size of which you may judge from the fact that one building alone contains Buddha and his five hundred Lo-hans, or saints of the third class, larger than life, just like the temple of which I told you at Canton, where, however, they are smaller; then whole courtyards are surrounded by buildings, in which heaven and hell are represented by hundreds upon hundreds of wooden dolls. The Buddhist heaven is a very queer place according to this view of it, where the height of happiness seems to consist in riding a tiger or griffin, or some equally uncomfortable mount; but hell is really too grotesque, especially the ladies' department, where the unfortunate women who have sinned in this world are to be seen experiencing what is, to say the very least of it, very inconsiderate treatment at the hands of a number of lavender-kid-glove-coloured fiends. In the gentlemen's department a favourite punishment is for sinners to have their heads cut off, and be compelled to walk about with them under their arms like a crush hat at a ball. No description of mine could give you any idea of the absurdity and ugliness of the idols and dolls. I can't say that, so far as I can judge, any real respect is paid to them. The people seem to make sort of picnic parties here, quite as a matter of sightseeing, rather than of religion, just as some tourists visit cathedrals for their beauty and for the art treasures which they contain, and not as an act of worship. However, they call visiting a temple "Kwang Miao," which means to do an act of respect and worship, so perhaps some may attach a religious importance to it. The priests at our temple are a lazy, brutish lot, and rather inclined to be insolent. At Wo-Fo-Ss? they are far more respectable, and a man who was staying there told me that they had constantly choral service in the temple, especially at night; here I very rarely hear the bell and drum beat for prayers. I must do our priests the justice to say that one day I offered one of them a glass of wine, which their laws forbid, but their stomachs crave for, and he refused, although there was no one by to have told the tale, so I suppose they have a conscience somewhere and that they regard its pricks.

I am sorry to say that by being out here we missed seeing the state funeral of the famous general San-Ko-Lin-Sin. He was carried all the way to Peking from Shantung, where he was killed, every mandarin on the road being bound to furnish men to bear his body. The Emperor pays the expense of his funeral and of his lying in state at Peking, and went himself to pour a libation before the coffin. San-Ko-Lin-Sin was a feudal Mongol prince, and his son has now been created a Wang, or prince. There are many people who say that the general was not killed by the rebels, but by his own troops. The account of his death, however, was given with great details, and he was probably killed fighting. "A corner of the Great Wall has gone," say the Chinese, in their picturesque way, when a great general is killed in battle.

LETTER X

No mail in--we are expecting it any minute, but have begun to fear that we must send off our bag before its arrival. I never saw anything so curious as the change which the last few wet days have caused in all the face of the country--its whole appearance is altered. What were before arid and desert patches of sand are now turned into green and luxuriant corn-fields--roads that were like dried water-courses, with six inches of dust lying on them and banks of sand on each side, are fresh English-looking lanes. The crops have sprung up to be so tall, that we could not see our usual landmarks, and lost our way; for the plain between Peking and the hills is so scarred and intersected by roads and paths, that one has to make straight for some point in the distance, or one is thrown out--all the houses and groups of cottages are exactly like one another and afford no assistance in steering; it is a regular Chinese puzzle. The thermometer has fallen from 108? in the shade to 75?. Such a relief!--I hope that we have now got quit of the very great heat.

We have no news.

Before leaving the hills we took a great walk over all the summits in order to get a thorough idea of the country around. It looks as if the sea, now about 100 miles off, must once have washed the foot of the mountains, forming bays, promontories, and headlands into the plain, which has the same appearance of being alluvial as that of Troy. The numberless watercourses which intersect it show that formerly there must have been a far greater flow of water towards the sea than is ever seen now, even in the rainiest season. From the highest peak we had a magnificent view of Peking, Yuen-Ming-Yuen, and the villages around, and behind us was another range of mountains, more wild, more rugged and picturesque than that on which we stood. It was raining slightly, and as we watched there came on one of the strangest atmospheric effects I ever saw. Between us and Peking there was a faint mist, while over the city itself a heavy cloud was hanging, partly black and partly lurid, with a sort of hellish glare about it that was perfectly indescribable. All around us there was a deep blue gloom; it was such a scene as Lot's wife may have looked upon.

We rode into town the day before yesterday, and made a circuit so as to take Yuen-Ming-Yuen, the famous summer palace, on our way. It was a new road to me, and a very pleasant one. We passed several Chinese villages, principally composed of soldiers' barracks, like elongated cow-sheds, and one very pretty prosperous-looking little city. As we drew near the Imperial grounds the scenery became prettier and prettier; above all there were shady groves, which were doubly delightful for the scorching morning sun that was blazing upon us. Quaint stone and marble bridges were thrown over the dykes and water-channels, and little gables of pagodas, charged with the inevitable tile gurgoyles, peeped out of the woods at intervals.

Yuen-Ming-Yuen is one of three parks containing Imperial palaces, two of which were destroyed in 1860. Some of the more out-of-the-way buildings in the third escaped notice and destruction. The name Yuen-Ming-Yuen has been wrongly given by Europeans to the whole, and still more wrongly to the only one of the three parks that can be seen, and which we visited. The proper name of this is Wan-Shao-Shan, the "Hill of the Ten Thousand Longevities," which is a figure of speech for the f?te day of the Emperor or Empress. Of course it is against the orders of the Chinese authorities that this is shown, but the guardians of the place make a good profit out of it, and if they were caught they would always be ready with the excuse that "the barbarians forced their way in and would not be kept out."

We were ushered through a number of courtyards, where there was nothing to be seen but ruined and charred walls, and the ghosts of departed pine-trees, and along a pretty covered walk to a pavilion by the lake where we were to breakfast. It was a lovely spot. The lake is a mass of lotus plants now in full flower; there are quantities of little islands covered with trees and buildings. A number of boats with naked fishermen in them gave a touch of wildness and barbarity to the scene, and further added to our amusement; for one of the men, in the hopes of finding Heaven knows what small loot among the masses of rubbish where there is not so much as a tile left whole, had come on shore and was lying hidden among the ruins; whom when the guardians perceived, they set up such a game of hare and hounds, and such a throwing of stones and bad language, as reminded me of Eton days when a boy from another house was found in my dame's without being able to give a good account of himself. When the brave men returned all panting and out of breath, they were very proud of themselves, and told us the story with much vigour and dramatic action, for it was a very valiant deed, as they were only three to one, "with power to add to their number."

There is nothing like a Chinese servant for a picnic or expedition of any kind, under whatever difficulties he may be placed. Shao-To never lets us lack for anything. Even Dan, the pointer puppy, had his usual mess of rice and broth, as if he had been at home. When we had breakfasted, with an admiring crowd around us, we went to explore the ruins. It is difficult to form any idea of what the palace must have been like, so complete has the work of destruction been. We scrambled up and down steep steps and along terraces where the wild vines and creepers, and sweet-scented weeds, now grow in tangled masses; there is not a stone that has not been split by the action of the fire. Two colossal marble kylins, of rare workmanship, are seared with cracks, and have almost fallen away in flakes. Of the great octagonal three-storied palace, not one stone lies on another, and a white marble balustrade alone shows where it stood. Higher up there are still a few remains untouched by fire. There is a little bronze temple, a perfect gem, which of course escaped, and two little revolving wooden pagodas full of small gods and images standing in a tower were also preserved; whilst above all a larger temple, built entirely of the yellow and green tiles I have so often described to you, shows what a blaze of glory the place must once have been. But that glory has passed away now, and so rapidly does ruin work in this climate, that soon even the little that remains to-day will perish. There is one very curious device thoroughly Chinese that I must mention. At the end of the terrace by the lake a sort of jetty stands out, built of huge blocks of stone, in the shape of a junk being launched into the lake, forty-one paces long by nine broad. Some of the rockwork is very quaint. When the Chinese come upon a quaintly-shaped rock or stone they mount it on a pedestal and make an ornament of it. There are many very curious specimens at Wan-Shao-Shan.

With regard to the destruction of the summer palace, I believe that, politically speaking, it was a mistake. It was necessary that some great reprisal should be made for the outrages committed by the Chinese; but the destruction should have taken place inside the city, and not twelve miles off; for so ignorant are the large body of the Chinese of what passes outside their four walls, that there are many here in Peking who to this day believe that we had to pay an indemnity for leave to withdraw our troops, and that we are only here on sufferance. If this is the case in Peking, in the provinces people must be still further from the truth, and it is the policy of the Government to keep up the delusion. Had the Imperial palace in Peking been destroyed the matter would have been notorious to all, and its recollection would not have been blown away with the last cloud of smoke from Yuen-Ming-Yuen.

Here is some more Chinese doctoring which may amuse you. A boy was brought the other day to the hospital of the London Mission with slight feverish symptoms. The doctor not being at home, the boy was taken by his parents to a Chinese practitioner, who prescribed a decoction of three scorpions, to be taken internally! The boy was well next day in spite of it.

A recipe for ophthalmia, posted on the walls of Peking, runs as follows:--Take three bright brass coins of the reign of Tao Kwang, boil them in water, and use the lotion. Here is our old saw, "A hair of the dog that bit you," worked in practice: For a dog bite, catch the dog, pull out a few of his hairs, and work them into a paste with a little lime and oil--apply the paste to the wound; of course, the lime acting as a caustic is the real remedy, but the hair is the one that is believed in.

The Legation is at present giving hospitality to a certain gentleman who is accredited by a small state to make a treaty with the Chinese, as he pompously announces "dans l'int?r?t de la Chine m?me"; if he does not talk less big at the Tsung-Li Yam?n, or Foreign Office, he will find the Chinese far less tractable than he seems to think it their duty to be; for they are much too sharp to suppose that anybody comes out here to negotiate treaties in their interest without having a still keener eye upon his own; and as for themselves, of course the mandarins, at any rate, would rather return to the old state of things, have nothing to do with us and our treaties, and sacrifice the revenue that accrues to them from their customs. The pressure put upon them from abroad, and the counsels of Mr. Hart, the Chinese Inspector-General of Customs, and a very able man, alone keep them straight, and compel the central Government to assume responsibilities which they would rather leave to the provincial authorities. Fancy the difficulty of stirring up into action men whose highest idea of celestial happiness is an eternity passed in the contemplation of their own paunches, in the society of Buddha and his Lo-hans.

It is very hard upon our interpreters that they should have to do the work of other missions besides our own. These ministers of other states come up here without any staff whatever, and the whole of their business falls upon the Legation to whose good offices they may be intrusted.

We are very often accosted by the more respectable class. The first salutation is always, "Have you had your dinner, sir?" which is the Chinese, "How d'ye do?" and then the conversation runs as follows:--

"Your honourable name?"

"My name is Mi. What is your honourable name?"

"My shabby name is Hwang. What are the years of your age?"

"I am twenty-eight" .

"How long have you been inside the walls?" .

"About four months."

"Do you belong to the great Ying, or the great Fa?" .

Then follow a string of the most absurd questions about England. One man asked one day whether it was true that in Europe there were men with holes through their chests and backs, whom their servants carried about by passing a bamboo pole through the hole and so hoisting them on to their shoulders. Such is the Chinese education, that one of their scholars, deeply read in ethics and Confucian books, would be capable of asking questions to the full as ridiculous as the above, which, indeed, was put by an educated man.

The best chance of picking up here and there a pretty thing is in the minor shops, from which the bigger ones are recruited. There is a street called the Liu-li-chang, which swarms with old book shops and curiosity shops, some of which are hardly more than stalls, where sometimes one may find a piece of fine porcelain, or other work of art, for an old song.

I start after to-morrow morning for Ku-Pei-Ko?u, to see the Great Wall, and I shall return by way of the tombs of the emperors of the Ming dynasty; so at any rate I shall not have to sing the eternal refrain, "Peking is very dirty." I shall be about eight days gone. The trip was originally to have been undertaken with the Russian Minister, but he is detained by business, so I go with Murray, and we accompany Saurin as far as Ku-Pei-Ko?u, whence he will travel into Mongolia, and Murray and I shall come back.

One more word about the Beggar's Bridge: often one of the poor creatures will die at his post, and I have seen the corpse lie there for two or three days hardly covered over by a piece of rotten matting. His troubles and miseries are over. The beggars are, I am told, a sort of guild with a recognised head, to whom it is not an infrequent custom to pay a slight annual tribute, by which means their importunities, such as taking up a position outside a man's door or shop, and refusing to "move on," may be avoided, and their piteous cry, "Ko? Lien! Ko? Lien!" no longer heard. Begging throughout Asia is a fine art.

I returned on Saturday from my trip to the Great Wall; I must try and give you some account of it.

We started on the 25th August, as I told you before. Saurin and Frater, one of the student interpreters, were going to make a journey in Mongolia, and Murray and I accompanied them to the frontier.

We slept at a place called Niu-Lan-Shan, near which there are some marshes with herons and wild-fowl. A Chinese inn is very unlike our notions of an inn. It is generally built round the four sides of a courtyard; the guests' house is at the bottom, facing north and south. East and west are stalls for mules, horses, and donkeys; the remaining side is occupied by the people of the house. The inn-yard is very animated--carts, pigs, horses, mules, dogs, flocks of pigeons, and poultry are crowded into it, besides poor travellers, Chinese and Mongol. Then there are generally a travelling barber plying his trade in one corner, a pedlar haggling for a few cash in another, and all the idle vagabonds who seem to comprise the greater part of the population of every place in Northern China, and who come in to loaf about and make remarks about the foreigners. There is no great variety or originality in these. There is always a fugleman, who makes a remark, and then the crowd take it up in chorus. The following is really a fair specimen of the sort of thing they say about us:--

There came on a fearful thunderstorm in the night, with a deluge of rain, which gave us some uneasiness, as we had several rivers ahead of us which we feared might become unfordable, as indeed turned out to be the case. However, the only inconvenience we suffered was in loss of time, for when we arrived next morning at the first river we found huge ferry-boats, worked by strapping Chinamen stark naked; it took us nearly two hours to get our carts, mules, and horses across. We amused ourselves the while in watching a swine-herd's vain endeavours to make his flock swim the stream, the opposition being led by a stubborn little curly-tail, with a majority in his favour. The consumption of pork at Peking must be something fabulous. The streets swarm with pigs, and yet from every direction we saw large herds being driven into the town. The Chinese who can afford it eat pork at nearly every meal. We found an encampment of Mongols on the river-bank. They were on their way homeward from Peking, where they had been selling horses. They seemed very good-humoured, honest people, simple and primitive to a degree, as amused as children with our watches, clothes, saddles, and other belongings.

It is very strange, the farther one gets from the capital, to see an improvement in everything. The fields are better cultivated, the houses are better built, and the villages far cleaner than the town. Fifteen miles out of Peking all the indecencies and filthiness which are its characteristics disappear entirely; a man would be stoned if he were to venture upon outraging decency as the Pekingese do; the poor peasants are more polite and less inquisitive about us, although foreigners so rarely appear among them, which makes one think that the inquisitiveness is sometimes only studied impertinence. We saw several farmhouses with pretty gardens and neat out-houses, which might have stood in an English shire, so free were they from all stamp of China. The people seemed well-to-do, and the farmers positively rich. We met a lady going out to spend the day with her gossip, dressed as smart as a new pin, and carrying her baby in her arms. She was riding a donkey, which, as soon as one of our vicious little Mongol ponies set eyes on, he made a dash at the ass and upset him and the lady and the baby, happily on to a bank, for had she fallen in the muddy lane there would have been an end to all her finery. As it was, she was let off for a good fright. "Ai ya! what manners are these! what manners are these!" she cried indignantly as she struggled on to her tiny goat's feet. We, of course, made all the apologies possible, and she bestrode her ass and rode off pacified--more or less.

The principal place that we passed on this day was Mi-Y?n-Hsien, a walled city. We did not enter the city, but skirted the walls. Outside the gate there stands a guard-house, and near this there is a tall blasted tree. It has neither leaf nor sprout, but from its whitened branches there hang small wooden cages, and in each cage is a human head, at which the carrion-birds are pecking. A ghastly fruit!

We slept at Mu-Chia-Yu. The next morning we started in good time, for we wished to reach Ku-Pei-Ko?u early that day. Although the ride of the day before had been very pretty, increasing in beauty as we drew near to the mountains, I was hardly prepared for such glorious scenery as we passed through on this day. The road lay over and between hillocks and rocks covered with ferns, mosses, and wild-flowers, and before us were the mountains with blue distances and fantastic outlines for a landscape-painter to revel in. Over the tops of the highest hills the Great Wall of China traced a zigzag course, like a distant chain. Rich crops of millet and Indian corn, with undergrowths of beans or buckwheat, bordered with the castor-oil plant, stood in the valleys and in the plain. The cottages of the different villages had an air of comfort and tidiness rare in China; almost every one had a little flower-garden fenced in by a hedge of millet stalks, trailed over with gourds, convolvulus, and vines. In some places the people were gathering in the smaller sort of millet; they were cutting the ears separately with a small knife, as a gardener would gather a dish of fruit or vegetables.

The sun was scorching hot, and it was a great relief to come upon a pretty village-green, at one end of which stood a small tea-shop, shaded by a covering of millet-straw and by a broad-spreading tree: our horses needed a rest as much as ourselves; they had been driven nearly mad by the flies and by one venomous little insect in particular, which must have been the original gadfly that persecuted Io. It has a long sheath in its tail, out of which it shoots a sting into the horses' flanks, apparently out of pure mischief, for it never seems to suck them, and it follows a horse or mule for miles. If one attacked our horses, the only way to get rid of it was to dismount and kill it. So sharp is its sting that every time it touched our beasts they jumped up as if they had been shot. We were all glad of a friendly shelter.

We found a party of Chinamen playing dominoes. They were playing the game more as we do cards than dominoes, but I could not make out the principle of it. The landlord was a very jolly, burly fellow, the picture of a host with whom everything prospered, although he must have been poor enough, for instead of tea he was drinking an infusion of dried leaves of jujube that is common on the hills. In some places where there is no tea to be had the people drink a sort of barley water, and very good it is. At these tea-shops guests are expected to bring their own tea-leaves. The house supplies only the pot and the boiling water.

Almost every man and woman that we met in this part of the valley had goitres, not so bad as those one meets in the Swiss valleys, but far more numerous. In one village we saw eight fullgrown men and women only--out of the eight seven had goitres.

Overlooking the village-green I mentioned above is a fort commanding the plain; and on one side of the fort the road has been cut through the solid rock and arched over with strong masonry, so as to form a gate, which bears the legend, "The Gate of the Southern Heavens." Through this gate there is a most gorgeous view of the different ranges, the Great Wall, and the approach to Ku-Pei-Ko?u.

Ku-Pei-Ko?u is in its way one of the most strikingly beautiful places that I have ever seen. The valley by which it is reached, with rocks, ferns, mosses, gardens, and a little rivulet sparkling in the sunlight, is a gem. The town itself stands in a little nest among the hills which surround it; on one side of it runs a river, on the farther bank of which, in a grove of trees, is the yam?n or official residence of the Ti-tu . There is not a point in the whole place from which there is not something attractive to rest one's eyes on. The streets are clean, the houses well built, and the shops seem to do a prosperous business. At one end of the town is the frontier gate of China; it is strongly guarded, and ingress or egress without passport is forbidden. Besides the walls of the city, as a guard against Mongol tribes, on the river side are two little ditches that a man might easily hop over, and two little pieces of cannon which look more dangerous to friend than to foe. We walked outside the gate to stand beyond the confines of China proper. The guard were extremely civil, the sentry politely inviting us into the guard-room to drink tea! The Chinese attach a great deal of importance to Ku-Pei-Ko?u as a border fortress. They keep up a garrison of two thousand men, of whom ten per cent are Tartars and the rest Chinese.

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