# Through China with a camera/Chapter 10

Chefoo—The Foreign Settlement—The Yellow River—Silk— Its Production—Taku Forts—The Peiho River—Chinese Progress—Floods In Pei-chil-li—Their Effects—Tientsin —The Sisters' Chapel—Condition Of The People—A Midnight Storm—Tung-chow—Peking—The Tartar And Chinese Divisions Of The Metropolis—Its Roads, Shops, And People—The Foreign Hotel—Temple And Domestic Architecture—The Tsungli Yamen—Prince Kung And The High Officers Of The Empire—Literary Championship—The Confucian Temple—The Observatory— Ancient Chinese Instruments—Yang's House—Habits Of The Ladies—Peking Enamelling—Yuen-ming-yuen— Remarkable Cenotaph—A Chinese Army—Li-hung-chang—The Inn Of 'patriotic Perfection'—The Great Wall—The Ming Tombs.
Chefoo is a favourite watering-place for foreigners resident at Peking or Shanghai, for there bracing air and sea-bathing may be enjoyed during the hottest months of summer.
The beach on which the European hotel is built, skirts the foot of a low range of grassy hills, and reminded me, in its semicircular sweep and general aspect, of Brodic Bay in Arran, on the west coast of Scotland. I have a Hvely recollection of Chefoo Bay; of its stretch which at the time appeared interminable; and of the soft yielding sand over which, with a friend remarkable alike for his good-nature, weight and agility, I had to run from the steamer to forestall the other passengers and ​secure the best apartment for an invalid lady from Shanghai. The thermometer at the time was standing at about one hundred degrees in the shade, so that after completing our task we were in a condition to enjoy to the full the cool breeze that swept through the verandah of the hotel. It was an unpretending but charming retreat, and none the less so on account of the many comforts which the enterprising proprietor had in store for his guests.
Chefoo foreign settlement lies on the opposite side of the bay, and is about the least inviting place of the kind on the coast. But still we must not forget that it enjoys the honour of standing on the ground of the most classic province in the Empire, where the engineering labours of the celebrated Yu were in part performed. Confucius, too, was a native of the Shan-tung province, and so indeed was Mensius, his successor. While Pythagoras was pursuing his philosophical researches at Crotona, Confucius was compiling the classical lore that has since been to China what the compass is to the mariner at sea. But this ancient guide to national prosperity, social, political and religious, when relied on by those who now-a-days control the helm of the Empire, is as untrustworthy as the compass of a man-of- war when the steersman makes no allowance for the influences of the iron plates and steel guns with which science has sur- rounded his needle. And yet fain would the wisest Confucianists of the "Central Flowery Land" still rivet their fond gaze on their ancient books; fain would they guide their steps by the rushlight of a dim science and philosophy, lit by sages of four thousand years ago; and that though truth, like the sun in noonday splendour, is shining on the nations around.
The foreign trade of Chefoo is small, though not unimpor- tant. Whether it be that the natives affect more the simple ​ robes of their ancient sages than the less costly cotton fabrics of Manchester, or whether the constantly recurring floods of the Hwang-ho or Yellow River, have so impoverished the inland districts as to materially damage trade, is a difficult point to determine.
Since the Yellow River has changed its course and now flows to the north of the Shan-tung mountains, a great portion of the Grand Canal has been rendered useless. The change of course to which I refer, took place in 1852, but in 1889 it again changed and forced its way to the south where it joined the Yangtzse. The Chinese, however, breaking away from their modern policy of squandering money on armaments and defences, found scope for their energy and perseverance in turning back to its northern channel the waters of the Hwang-ho. This they eventually suc- ceeded in doing by the aid of foreign appHances, a task which may be fairly accounted a triumph of engineering skill. In many places the banks had been carried away, and an eye-witness has described the scene in the following words:* — *^For dreari- ness and desolation no scene can exceed that which the Yellow River here presents; everything natural and artificial is at the mercy of the muddy dun-coloured waters, as they sweep on their course towards the sea."
But we shall see as we pass through Pei-chil-li, how these floods actually affect the people. Thus, while a considerable extent of country suffers from the withdrawal of the great river from its old channel, parts of Shan-tung and Pei-chil-li come in for a superabundant share of its waters. Notwithstanding this there are some portions of the former province which are as productive as any soil in the world, and where the nature
of the climate is favourable to the culture of a wide range of products. These include millet, wheat, rice, tobacco and beans — the latter, in the shape of bean-cake," forming a valuable article of exportation. Besides the foregoing a certain sort of dark- coloured silk fabric, known as "Pongee" silk, is produced in Shan-tung, and exported in steadily increasing quantities from Chefoo. This silk is obtained from a wild black worm that feeds on a different kind of leaf from the mulberry. Rearing silk-worms in China is an exceedingly delicate process, and one which one might almost have supposed unsuited to the natives, for the little worm is most exacting in its habits. It has even been stated that it will refuse either to feed or to work before strangers ; and the Chinese aver that it cannot endure the presence of foreigners, or the sounds of barbaric tongues. If in this respect it resembles its masters, it differs from them widely in its abhorrence of uncleanly odours, and indeed in a polluted atmosphere will sicken and starve itself to death. For this reason the Chinese, from the time when the worm emerges from the egg to the moment when it perishes in its own silken robe, must suffer great inconvenience by the compulsory absence of all those strong smells wherein so many of them take an unaffected delight. No wonder, then, if the close of the silk season, when the dainty little toiler has woven its shroud and met its doom, should be one of great rejoicing.
Like the culture of tea, silk — which confers an enormous benefit on China, and has now become an indispensable luxury to the world — is the most modest industry imaginable. Let us cast a glance on the various progressive steps through which the staple passes till it is ready for the looms of China or Lyons.
The eggs are hatched about the middle of April, and the best season to obtain them for exportation is in March, or ​the beginning of April. The young worms, when hatched are placed on bamboo frames and fed on mulberry-leaves cut up into small shreds. As the worms increase in size they are transferred to a larger number of frames, and are fed with leaves not so finely shred; and so the process continues until, in their last stage, the leaves are given to them entire. The price of leaves runs from four shillings and sixpence to eight shillings a picul (133 lbs). After hatching, the worms continue eating during five days, and then sleep for the first time for two days. When they again wake their appetite is not quite so good, and they usually eat for four days only and sleep again for two days more. Then they eat for the third time for four days and repose for two. This eating and repose is usually repeated four times, and then having gained full strength, they proceed to spin their cocoons. The task of spinning occupies them from four to seven days more; and when this business is completed three days are spent in stripping off the cocoon, and some seven days later each small cultivator brings his silken harvest to the local market and disposes of it to native traders, who make it up into bales.
Leaving popular superstitious influences out of account, the quality of the silk is first of all affected by the breed of the worms that spin it, then by the quality of the leaves and the mode of feeding. As I have already remarked, the silk-worm is injured by noise, by the presence and especially by the handling of strangers, and by noxious smells. They must be fed, too, at regular hours, and the temperature of the apartment must not be too high. The greatest defect in Chinese silk has been due to the primitive mode of reeling, which the natives adopt. Shanghai is the great silk mart, and there, about June 1st, the first season's silk is usually brought down. It is never the ​growers who bring the silk to the foreign market. These growers are invariably small farmers, who either purchase the leaves, or have a few mulberry bushes planted in some odd corner of their tilled lands, and the rearing of the worm and the production of silk by no means monopolise the whole of their time. It is only a spring occupation for the women and younger members of their families. Chinese merchants or brokers proceed to the country markets, and there collect the produce until they have secured enough to make up a parcel for the Shanghai or Chefoo markets, where it is bought up by foreigners for exportation.
I paid two visits to Chefoo, and must have experienced the extremes of temperature. On the first occasion the heat was intense; but on my return the cold was so severe that my boy Ahong had his ears and nose frost-bitten. We had proceeded to a hill-top to obtain a picture of Chefoo, but the north-west wind, blowing from the icy steppes of Mongolia, was like to freeze the blood in our veins. Having, however, succeeded in taking a photograph, I sent to a neighbouring hut for a bottle of water to wash the negative, but no sooner had I withdrawn the plate from the shelter of the dark tent and poured the water over it, than the liquid froze on its surface and hung in icicles around its edge. In spite of these difficulties we adjourned to a friendly hut, where we thawed the plate over a charcoal fire and washed it with hot water,—wet plate process.
The next place of importance at which we touched on our route north, was Taku, at the mouth of the Peiho. The Taku forts are mud strongholds, which have been often and well described. At the time of my visit these forts had been under repair; still they were not yet properly garrisoned, nor were their guns all mounted. I passed along a stone pavement which ​leads from the river across the inner extremity of the mud slough. It was here in 1859, that so many of our men were shot down in the unsuccessful attempt to storm the southern fort. We carried the place without much difficulty a twelve-month afterwards. The only entrance into this fort is across a wide ditch from behind. As for me, I passed inside it without a word being asked; for indeed there were only one or two coolies loitering about the enclosure. The walls are of great thickness, and built, as formerly, of mud and millet-stalks—a composition well adapted to resist shot. Within were two batteries of over fifty guns a-piece, one above the other, and commanding the entrance to the stream. Some of them, however, were rusty, badly mounted on their carriages, and altogether sadly in want of repair. Lastly, I noticed two large American smooth-bores lying half-buried in mud in front of the officers' quarters. On the whole the place wore the look of a deserted mud-quarry rather than a fortress. But I have been informed that a great change has since come over the scene—that these fortresses, one on each side of the Peiho, are now armed with Krupp guns and properly garrisoned; so that thus the defence of the capital has been secured after a scheme planned out and decided upon long before the Formosa difficulty cropped up. I myself saw a battery of Krupp guns landed at Tientsin before I left that place of dark memories; and indeed there could be no question that the Chinese were hastily arming themselves with modern weapons, laying up stores of destructive projectiles and ammunition, and addressing themselves to the task of guarding their own shores from invasion. It may be—nay, it must be—that there is a purpose in all this. The Chinese Government have probably not been blind all these years to what has been going on in Japan, to say nothing of the visions they may entertain ​of possible encounters with more formidable foes. They undoubtedly still retain the notion that they have an absolute right to do what they like with their own country and in it; and they are probably only preparing themselves to assert or defend this right when a suitable opportunity presents itself. Prince Kung, in despatch about the Woosung Bar at Shanghai, declined to dredge a channel to facilitate trade, and regarded the sand-bank as a barrier set there by Divine Providence to aid the Chinese in the defence of the country and its approaches. He further pointed out that each nation has a right to guard and protect its own territory by the means it alone deems best. It is perhaps very natural to suppose that China was made exclusively for the support of Chinamen, and that no other race has a right to question this divine arrangement, or to seek by the simple dredging of a sand-bar to thwart the plans of a kind Providence, who is thus closing up the river-courses against the commerce which furnishes millions of Chinese with means to feed and clothe themselves that formerly they could never have obtained.
In this narrow policy there is not the faintest recognition of that divine progress which, by a thousand telegraphs, railways and industries, is tending more and more to bind the nations of the earth together in one universal kinmanship, where, by free intercourse and liberal enlightened government, peoples of every nation, kindred and tongue, will be rendered mutually dependent on each other.
The inundations were predicted just as they happened, years before the swollen river burst its barriers at Lung-men-Kan, and might have been easily prevented by keeping clear "what has always been an artificial channel." The business was put off, ​however, from one year to another, until at last the red flood burst upon the plains and transformed a fruitful smiling country into lakes, lagoons and pestilential marshes.
As we steamed up the Peiho, there were many places where not a trace of the river's banks was to be discovered, and the further we ascended the more apparent became the ravages of the flood. The millet-crop was rotting under the water, and whole hamlets had in many places been swept away. The village dwellings, like the Taku forts, were for the most part constructed of millet-stalks and mud; but however well calculated to resist the shots of an ordinary foe, these frail abodes, one by one had silently dissolved before the invading waters, leaving nothing behind them but something that looked like grave-mounds, the melancholy landmarks of each new work of desolation. We could see the wretched villagers squatting on the tops of their hillocks, sheltered by scraps of thatch or matting which they had rescued from the flood. All who had means were removing to Tientsin, where the authorities were said to be doing their utmost to relieve the sufferers. Singularly enough I overheard a Chinaman say that he considered the flood a punishment for the Tientsin massacre, which had occurred just a year before.
It is quite impossible to estimate the misery that such disasters bring upon the toiling poor of the province, who are thus bereft of food, shelter and fuel; and that, too, when the winter was just at hand. The scene on all sides presented one sheet of water, only broken by the wrecks of villages, and by islands of mud where herds of cattle were packed and perishing for want of pasture. Men, women and children were to be seen fishing in the shallows of their harvest-fields. Fish were abundant; and this was fortunate, as the people had little else ​ to subsist on. How they got through the hot days and cold nights, and how many of them survived their hardships only to be subjected to them in the succeeding year, it is impossible to say. We could tell from the bodies drifting seaward that Death was busy among them, relieving the sick and satisfying the hungry in his own sad final way.
The Chinese, like peoples both ancient and modern, have a superstitious dread of disturbing the resting-places of their dead. For many miles around Tientsin the country is one vast burial- ground, and it was pitiful to notice the efforts the living were making to lash the coffins of their dead to trees or to posts which they had driven into the mud. But numbers of the huge clumsy coffins were to be seen floating adrift, with no living relation to care for their occupants. The water was so deep that in many places the tortuous river's channel had been abandoned, and native craft were sailing overland, so to speak, direct from the city.
Our steamer, the " Sin-nan-sing, " had great difficulty in turning the sharp bends of the river; her bow would stick in the mud of one bank, and her screw in the other ; but at length Tientsin was reached, and there we found the water five or six feet deep at the back of the foreign settlement, and the Peking road submerged.
The foreigners were looking forward to the prospect of soon being shut in by a sea of ice. Here, on the bank of the river, was a British hotel, called *'The Astor House," its modest pro- portions almost concealed by the huge signboard in front. This establishment was constructed of mud, and on one side of it a window had fallen out, while on the other the wall had fallen in. I had a look at this unpromising exterior and some conver- sation with its proprietor. The latter was an Englishman, and ​
he lamented to me over the wreck of his property. There were still two apartments in front, one containing a billiard- table and the other a bar ; but a couple of mud bedrooms had dissolved and could be seen in solution through a broken wall. The stabling in the rear also, out of sheer depression at losing its occupants, had taken a header into the water and disappeared. We next passed out of doors to examine the ravages of the flood in sundry outhouses which had also settled down. In the bar-room I found a Scotchman connected with the Tientsin Powder Factory, saying some very hard things about the pecu- liar views of a Chinese tailor to whom he had entrusted some
that the tailor had found it necessary, on account of family concerns, to remove from Tientsin to another district, and had taken the cloth with him without going through the ceremony of leaving his card.
I slept on board the steamer, and started for Peking on August 29th. Before setting out I engaged a Tientsin man named Tao, or *' Virtue," at the rate of nine dollars a month; but this sum was a trifle compared with what he intended to make out of me, as in every transaction, whether it was simply to change a dollar into cash, or to buy provisions, he made a profitable bargain for himself. My own southern men could have managed better, although they were ignorant of the northern dialect, and could only make known their wants in writing. Systematic pilfering, however, I soon discovered to be the common attribute of servants in the north. We engaged a boat to convey us to Tung-chow, the nearest point by water to Peking. This boat carried a wooden house in the centre, which could be shut up all round at night, so as to keep the cold out ; and it was just large enough to accommodate my party and baggage. The space ​ within it was divided into two compartments, and in the after one stood a clay cooking galley, around which the boys were stowed. Our crew consisted of a father, Wong-Tsing, and his two sons, Wong-su and Wong-soon. We had to make our way up through the city of Tientsin along a narrow ever-changing channel between thousands of native trading-boats. It was not without a free use of such poles, and the vilest epithets in the language, that we got clear of the floating Babel at last. The left bank, hereabouts, was covered with mounds of salt, piled up beneath the mat sheds which the salt monopolist had erected to protect his precious store.
The river at this point was about 200 yards wide, and Tao pointed out on the right bank the black bare walls of the Sisters ' Chapel that had been burned twelve months before. There, too, we could see the ruins of the hospital where the Sisters of Mercy had consecrated their lives to the ministration of the sick, and to rescuing outcast children ; for which good works they had here been brutally murdered by an ignorant and superstitious mob. There was still a heap of ashes in front of the edifice, and the long breach in its wall through which the murderers dragged their hapless victims to their doom. The breach had indeed been plastered up with mud, a fitting type of the unsatisfactory way in which the Chinese sought to atone for an outrage which was perpetrated almost within sight of the Governor-General's yamen.
From this point, too, we could descry, at the upper end of the reach, the imposing ruins of the Roman Catholic cathedral, the only striking object in the city of Tientsin; and the reflec- tion was forced upon me, from what I know of native super- stition, that that noble pile of buildings, standing as it did so
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feeling against foreigners. This feeling was without doubt greatly intensified by horrible stories, most ingeniously spread abroad by the literary members of society, describing how foreigners manufacture medicines from the eyes and hearts of Chinese children, or even of adults. In the latter case it is to procure silver that these practices are alleged to be carried on ; and this we may gather from the accompanying passage out of a native work which was in brisk circulation when the massacre took place. "The reason for extracting eyes is this. From one hundred pounds of Chinese lead can be extracted eight pounds of silver, and the remaining ninety-two pounds of lead can be sold at the original cost. But the only way to obtain this silver is by compounding the lead with the eyes of Chinamen. The eyes of foreigners are of no use, hence they do not take out the eyes of their own people." Further on it says :" The people of France without exception follow the false and corrupt Tien- chu religion. They have devilish arts by which they transform men into beasts," etc.
This pamphlet is full of matter unfit for quotation, and con- cludes with an appeal to the people to rise and exterminate the hated strangers: —
'* Therefore, these contemptible beings having aroused our righteous wrath, we, heartily adhering to the kingdom of our sovereign, would not only give vent to a little of the hate that will not allow us to stand under the same heaven with them, but would make an eternal end of the distress of being obliged to have them ever near us. ... * If the temporising policy is adopted, this nonhuman species will again increase." The author
of foreigners and the preservation of the virtuous followers of Confucius. When we consider that this pamphlet had a wide, though, as it was pretended, a secret circulation ; and above all, when we reflect on the utter ignorance and superstition, and the fierceness of the half-starved classes whom it professed to caution and enlighten, and on whom the calm, moderate and subtle style of some of its worst passages must have produced a fearful effect, we cannot wonder at the result.
Tao believed implicitly in the strange stories which he had heard about the priests and about the poor Sisters, who had been so cruelly put to death. The ruins now were being care- fully guarded by a fleet of native gun-boats; but there were none of them at hand when succour was really needed, nor did they reach the spot until long after the deed had been accomplished.
I could not refrain from offering some remarks to my new man about the miserable mud huts in which his countrymen dwelt. Whereupon, with a vanity not uncommon in his race — although it surprised me at the time —he pointed out what he held to be the advantages of occupying such abodes. His argu- ments ran something like this : — The materials, mud and millet- stalks, can be had all over the plain, at every man's doorway cheaply — for the lifting, indeed ; whereas wood and stone are too dear for poor people to procure. Then, again, with such materials every man can be his own architect and mason; and finally, when floods and rain dissolve the tenement, it sinks down quietly, forming a mound in which the furniture and domestic utensils may repose, and on which the family may sit till the waters have subsided and they are able to set to again and raise up their broken walls.
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form great impediments to the traffic, both on land and by water ; for the pontoon is never pulled up to make a passage until about a dozen junks and boats have collected, and their owners, who by that time have been long waiting for the event, are clamouring and fighting amongst themselves to get first through. While the boats are passing through, the land traffic is of course interrupted, and crowds of foot passengers and vehicles are pressing forward on each side of the aperture to await the replacement of the pontoon. One or two of them, unable to make their way back, were driven over into the water and rescued by boat-hooks as we passed. The narrow wooden pavement of the bridge was made still narrower by a throng of shops and stalls, lepers, beggars and jugglers.
As the land rose towards the hills which sweep like a cres- cent around the north of Peking, we emerged from the flooded plains into a less desolate region, where the people were not so destitute of the common necessaries of life, and where the banks were lined with ripe fields of millet. Our boatmen, like the dwellers on land, Hved on the flour of this useful cereal, which they season with salt-fish and garUc. The flour is made into bread, or rather cooked and pulled out into strings of hot, tough, elastic dough. This the people consumed in great quantities at meal-times, and always appeared to recover from its effects, although to me it seemed just about as digestible as india-rubber cables. Here we encountered many ponies, mules and donkeys in use; the mules being of an exceedingly fine breed, and having, many of them, zebra stripes across the legs. As for the donkeys, they were thoroughly domesticated, and followed their masters to and fro like dogs.
The huts improved in appearance as we neared Tung-chow, ​and the villagers, too, were more robust-looking, although even the best of these, in spite of their willow-shaded dwellings and their harvest-fields, betrayed evidences of a hard-struggling, hand- to-mouth existence.
It was not till the afternoon of the fourth day that we reached Tung-chow, though we made but another halt to visit a village fair, where we saw a poor conjuror perform tricks for a few cash that would make his fortune on a London stage. And yet his greatest trick of all was transforming three copper cash into gold coin. His arms were quite bare, and having taken his cash in the palm of his hand, he permitted me to close the fingers over them. Then, passing a wand above the clenched fist, he opened it again and feasted the greedy eyes of his rustic admirers on what looked extremely like glittering gold. He also killed a small boy whom he had with him, by plunging a knife into his body. The youth became suddenly pale, seemed to expire, then jumping up again, removed the knife with one hand, while he solicited patronage with the other. There was one feat which this conjuror performed with wonderful dexterity. He placed a square cloth flat upon the ground, and taking it by the centre, between his forefinger and thumb, with one hand, he waved the wand with the other; and, gradually raising the cloth, disclosed a huge vase brimful of pure water beneath it.
At Tung-chow our boat was boarded by at least a dozen coolies eager to carry our baggage One of them incautiously lifted a trunk and was making off with it, when he was suddenly relieved of the burden by Tao and hurled pell-mell into the water. This summary procedure on the part of my Tientsin man almost cost him his much venerated tail, for it had nearly been torn out at the roots by the infuriated coolies before I
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for our railways, cabs and omnibuses, but they have no springs. A railway is being built from Tientsin to Peking. Notwith- standing this they might be comfortable enough if so constructed as to allow the passenger to sit down, and used only on a perfectly level road. Tao had himself carefully packed into his conveyance with straw, but as for me, not liking the look of the vehicles, I determined to walk at least a part of the way. There may be passages in what I have still to relate which may seem strange to a European reader, and I may be allowed perhaps, therefore, here to remind him . that I am describing only w^hat I actually saw and experienced. Soon we were entering Tung-chow, the carts plunging and lumbering behind us over what at one time had been a massively constructed Mongolian causeway. Gallantly the carters struggled on beneath an ancient archway, when suddenly the thoroughfare was found jammed by a heavily laden cart drawn by a team of mules and donkeys, that had stuck fast among the broken blocks of stone. Straightway the air re-echoed with the execrations of a hundred carters, who found their progress obstructed, and it was full half an hour before we managed to pass. I should think that the distinguished members of the Peking Board of Works can hardly have ventured so far as Tung-chow on their tours of inspection. A few moderate-sized stone walls thrown across the street there could scarcely prove more serious impe- diments to the traffic than the existing dilapidated pavement. One may now travel on a well-constructed railway from a station adjoining the Taku forts, to Tientsin. This line will eventually be carried to Peking. The rails and plant for the extension were imported during the war. As for the town and its inhab- itants, we had ample leisure to inspect them before the carts ​had struggled clear of their streets. The shop-fronts were of richly carved wood, quite different from what one sees in the south, but seemingly stained with the accumulated dust of ages.
Even outside Tung-chow the roads were knee-deep in mud, in consequence of the heavy rain which had fallen during the previous night, so that I had no further choice, and perforce took refuge in the cart. My driver smelt of sam-shu and garlic, and placed such implicit trust in his mule that, once fairly on the road, he fell asleep on the shaft, and had to be reminded frequently by a shove off his perch, that he might as well do something to extricate his jaded beast and its burden from the pitfalls and mud-pools of the way. At length we made a halt at an inn. These inns supply food for man and beast, and occur at frequent intervals along that road, reminding one in some respects of those similar old-fashioned wayside resting-places which are now dying out rapidly in our own land.
Outside this inn ran a long low wall, whitewashed and inscribed in huge black characters with the sign or motto, '* Perpetual felicity achieved." Along the entire front of the establishment a narrow dwarf-table had been set up, and groups of travellers seated round it discussed reeking bowls of soup or tea, and the latest news from the capital. Their cattle they had already made over to the care of hangers-on at the inn.
Tao and my Hainan men had gone on ahead, but 1 stopped here and partook of a diner a la Chinoisey which was served up to me in a bedroom. This apartment contained nothing save a table and a chair, and a bed or kang made of bricks. As for the table, it was covered with a surface formation of dirt, into which I could cut like cheese. But I must say that the dinner here supplied me was the best I ever tasted at a Chinese
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used as a stable ; and its window filled in with a small wooden frame and originally covered with paper, was now festooned with dusty spiders'-webs. Another long detour at length brought us to the Chi-ho gate of the Tartar city.
Before we enter I will run over some of the more general characteristics of the city at which we have now arrived. It stands, as we have already seen, on a plain sloping down to the sea, and is indeed made up of two towns — a Tartar or Manchu quarter, and a Chinese settlement — joined together by a wall more than twenty miles round. At the time of the Manchu conquest these two divisions were parted from each other by a second, inner wall; the true natives of the soil, at least those of them supposed to be friendly to the new dynasty, being confined within a narrow space to the south; while the Tartar army was encamped around the Imperial palace in the northern city, which covers a square space of double the area of the Chinese town.
In so far as the features 1 have just described are concerned, Peking is the same to-day as it was over 200 years ago, when the descendants of Kublai Khan mounted the Imperial throne. There are still in the Tartar city the same high walls pierced with nine double gateways; the same towers and moats and fortified positions; and within, the palace is still surrounded by the permanent Manchu garrison, like that which was established in most of the provincial capitals of China.
The army was originally divided into four corps, distinguished by the white, red, yellow and blue banners under which they respectively fought. Four bordered banners of the same colours were subsequently added, and eight corps of Mongols and an equal number of Chinese adherents were created at a later date. Each corps of Manchu bannermen possesses, or rather is sup​posed to possess, its ground as originally allotted to it within the Imperial city; and before the cottage doorways one may still see square paper lamps, whose colours denote the banners to which their proprietors respectively belong. But time has changed the stern rules under which the Chinese were confined to their own quarter. Their superior industry and their slowly but surely accumulating wealth have gradually made them masters of the Tartar warriors, and of their allotments within the sacred city. In fact, Chinese thrift and commercial energy have conquered the descendants of the doughty Manchus who drove the Mings from the throne.
It can hardly be credited by the stranger who visits this Chinese centre of the universe, that the miserable beings whom he sees clad in sheep-skins out of the Imperial bounty, and acting as watchmen to the prosperous Chinese, are in reality the remnants of those noble nomads who were at one time a terror to Western Europe, and at a later date the conquerors of the "Central Flowery Land."
The old walls of the great city are truly wonderful monuments of human industry. Their base is sixty feet wide, their breadth at the top about forty feet, and their height also averages forty feet. But, alas ! time and the modern arts of warfare have rendered them practically nothing more than interesting relics of a bygone age. A wooden stockade would now-a-days be about as effective a protection to the Imperial throne within. They seem to be well defended, however. Casting our eyes up to the great tower above the gateway, we can see that it bristles with guns; yet the little field-glass of modern science reveals to us after all only a mock artillery, painted muzzles on painted boards, threatening sham terrors through the countless embrasures.
$_{ImperialPalaceWall,Peking.}$
become long shallow lagoons, and yonder a train of 100 camels is wading calmly through one into the city. The Government probably know all this, and have turned their attention to the defence of the coast line and frontiers ; in the hope perhaps that a foreign foe will never again be able to flounder over the broken highways, and bring warfare to the palace door. A vain delusion truly, unless China is prepared to take to heart the sad lessons of modern battle-fields, and to keep pace with the ever-progressive science that is at work in our European arsenals. How can she do this.?^ She may squander wealth — distilled out of the blood, sinews and sweat of long-suffering labour — upon fleets and armaments; but where will she find the genius to use her weapons to advantage.^ (Written in 1872.) In the event of a collision with a foreign Power, what good end would the hasty purchase of iron-clads and arms secure.^ As for the new weapons which they are manufacturing for themselves, we will hope that the rulers may never become so utterly blinded as to place these in the hands of untrained troops to defend the ancient policy of exclusiveness so fatal to progress in China. It will be readily admitted that this forecast has been fully justified by recent events.
But let us hasten our steps and enter the gate to behold this great metropolis. A mighty crowd is pressing on towards the dark archway, and we betake ourselves again to our carts, feeling sure that our passports will be examined by the guards on duty at the portal. But after all we pass through unnoticed in the wake of a train of camels, laden with fuel from the coal- mines not far off. There is a great noise and confusion. Two streams, made up of carts, camels, mules, donkeys and citizens, have met beneath the arch, and are struggling out of the darkness ​at either end. Within there is a wide thoroughfare, by far the widest I encountered in any Chinese city, and as roomy as the great roads of London. All the main streets of Peking can boast of this advantage ; but the cartway runs down the centre of the road, and is only broad enough to allow two vehicles to pass abreast. The causeway in the middle is kept in repair by material which coolies ladle out of the deep trenches or mud-holes to be seen on either side of it. Citizens using this part of the highway after dark are occasionally drowned in these sloughs. Thus one old woman met her end in this way when I was in Peking, so that I never felt altogether safe when riding through the streets at night; while in the morning, when the dutiful servants of the Board of Works were flourishing their ladles, one had to face the insalubrious odours of the putrid mud; and at mid-day again, more especially if the weather was dry, the dust was so thick that when I washed my beard I could have suppHed a valuable contribution towards the repairs of the road.
Notwithstanding all this, if there were no dust-clouds to obstruct the sight, the Peking streets are highly picturesque and inter- esting. Along each side of the central highway an interminable line of booths and stalls has been set up, and there almost everything under the Chinese sun is to be obtained. Then out- side these stalls, again, there are the footpaths and beyond them we come upon the shops, which form the boundaries of the actual road. It is a complicated picture, and I only hope that the reader may not lose himself, as I have done more than once, amid the maze of streets. The shops had a great fascination for me. In both cities they are almost always owned by Chi- nese, for the Tartars, even if they have money, are too proud to trade ; and if they have none, as is most frequently the case, ​they possess neither the energy nor the ingenuity to make a start. The Chinese, on the other hand, will many of them trade on nothing ; and some seem capable of living on nothing too, until by patience and thrift, if they ever have the ghost of a chance, they manage to obtain a fair living.
The shops in Peking, both outside and within doors, are very attractive objects. Many of their fronts are elaborately carved, painted and gilded; while as for the interiors, these are fitted up and finished with an equally scrupulous care, the owners ready for business inside, clothed in their silks, and looking a supremely contented tribe. I could discover evidences of distribution of the wealth of the official classes in all those shops which in any way supplied their wants, or ministered to their tastes. On the other hand, signs of squalor and misery were apparent every- where in the unwelcome and uncared-for poor ; all the more apparent, perhaps, when brought face to face with the tokens of wealth and refinement.
I have not space to relate a tenth of what I beheld or expe- rienced in this great capital; how its naked beggars were found in the winter mornings dead at its gates; how a cart might be met going its rounds to pick up the bodies of infants too young to require the sacred rites of sepulture ; how the destitute were to be seen crowding into a sort of casual ward already full, and craving permission to stand inside its walls, so as to obtain shelter from the wintry blast that would freeze their hearts be- fore the dawn. There are acres of hovels at Peking, in which the Imperial bannermen herd, and filth seems to be deposited like tribute before the very palace gates ; indeed, there is hardly a spot in the capital that does not make one long for a single glimpse of that Chinese paradise we had pictured to ourselves in our youth — for the bright sky, the tea-fields, orange-groves ​and hedges of jasmine, and for the lotus-lakes filling the air with their perfume.
Next to the shops, the footpaths in front of them are perhaps most curious to a foreigner. In these paths, after a shower of rain, many pools occur — pools which it is impossible to cross except by wading, unless one cares to imitate an old Pekingese lady, who carried two bricks with her wherever she went, to pave her way over the puddles. As in the Commercial Road in London, crowds congregate in front of the tents and stalls of the hawkers, while the shopkeepers spread out their wares for sale so as to monopolise at least two-thirds of the pave- ment, so also in Peking, in yet greater numbers and variety, the buyers and sellers occupy every dry spot. Sometimes one can only get through the press by brushing against the dry dusty hides of a train of camels, as they are being unladen be- fore a coal-shed; and one must take care, should any of them be lying down, not to tread on their huge soft feet, for they can inflict a savage bite. In another spot it may become ne- cessary to wait until some skittish mule, tethered in front of a shop, has been removed by its leisurely master, who is smoking a pipe with the shopman inside. Once, as I threaded my way along, 1 had to climb a pile of wooden planks to reach the path beyond, and finding that a clear view could be obtained from the top of a fine shop on the other side of the road, I had my camera set up and proceeded to take a photograph. But in two or three minutes, before the picture could be secured, there was a sudden transformation of the scene. Every available spot of ground was taken up by eager but good-natured spectators; traffic was suspended; and just as I was about to expose the plate, some ingenious youth displaced the plank on which I stood, and brought me down in a ​
$_{TRAVELLINGCOOK.}$
$_{CHIROPODIST-PEKING.}$
Some of the booths close to the foot-way are built of mud or brick, and would indeed become permanent structures, but that their occupants may be ordered at any moment to clear them away, so as to make room for the progress of the Em- peror. For I must tell you that whenever the Sovereign is carried abroad, outside his own palace walls, the roads must be cleared, and even cleaned, that his sacred eyes may not be offended with a glimpse at the true condition of his splendid capital. After he has passed by, booths, tents and stalls are re-erected, and commerce and confusion resume their sway. As matters stand, these roadside obstructions are really a great boon to the people. Anything can be bought at the stalls, and their owners are neither slow nor silent in advertising the fact. At one a butcher and a baker combine their crafts. The for- mer sells his mutton cut to suit the taste of his customers, while at the same time he disposes of all the bones and refuse to the cook who manufactures savoury pies before a hungry crowd of lookers-on. Twirling his rolling-pin on his board, he shrieks out in a shrill key a list of the delicacies he has prepared.
Jewels, too, of no mean value, are on sale here as well, and there are peep-shows, jugglers, lottery-men, ballad-singers and story-tellers; the latter accompanying their recitations with the strummings of a lute, while their audience sits round a long table and listens with rapt attention to the dramatic renderings of their poets. The story-teller, however, has many competitors to contend against, and of all his rivals the old-clothes-men are perhaps the most formidable tribe. These old-clothes-men enjoy a wide celebrity for their humorous stories, and will run off with a rhyme to suit the garments as they offer them to the highest bidder. Each coat is thus invested with a miraculous ​history, which gives it at once a speculative value. If it be fur, its heat-producing powers are eloquently described. "It was this fur which, during the year of the great frost, saved the head of that illustrious family Chang. The cold was so intense that the people were mute. When they spoke, their words froze and hung from their lips. Men's ears congealed and were devoid of feeling, so that when they shook their heads they fell off. Men froze to the streets and died by thousands; but as for Chang of honoured memory, he put on this coat, and it brought summer to his blood. How much say you for it.?^" etc. The foregoing is a rendering of the language actually used by one of these sellers of unredeemed pledges.
I saw two or three men who were driving a trade in magic pictures and foreign stereoscopic photographs, some in not the most refined style of art; and as for the peep-shows — well, the less one says about them the better; they certainly would not be tolerated in any public thoroughfare in Europe. The original Punch and Judy is also to be encountered in the Peking streets ; puppets worked by the hands of a hidden operator, on just the same plan as with us. At night, too, 1 have frequently seen a most ingenious shadow pantomime, contrived by projecting small movable figures on to a thin screen, under a brilliant light from behind. Capital clay images may be purchased at some of the stalls; but in no part of China has this art of making coloured clay figures reached such perfection as at Tientsin. At that place tiny figures are sold for a mere song, which are by far the cleverest things of the kind I ever saw. These are not only most perfect representations of Chinese men and women, but many of them hit off humorous characteristics with the most wonderfully artistic fidelity.
$_{ManchuTartarLady.}$
$_{ChineseCoster.}$
$_{PEKINGPEEP-SHOW.}$
$_{MarbleBridge,Peking.}$
accorded to me by Monsieur Thomas, the proprietor. Thomas was not the cleanest man in the world, but he was extremely polite, which was something. There was, however, about his costume a painful lack of buttons, and its appearance might perhaps have been improved by the addition of a waistcoat, and by the absence of the grease that seemed to have been strug- gling up to reach his hair, but had not arrived at its destination. His hands, and even his face, in prospect of our coming, had been hastily though imperfectly washed. But then he was a cook, too ; and he remarked, when I flattered him on this head, that there was nothing like a little eau-de-vie to enable an artist to put the finishing touches on a chef-d'ceuvre, either of cookery or painting. Had he confessed to a great deal of that stimulant, he would have been much nearer the truth.
My bedroom was not a comfortable one. How could it h^} — it was chiefly built of mud. The mud floor, indeed, was mat- ted over, but the white-washed walls felt sticky, and so did the bed and curtains; a close, nasty smell, too, pervaded the whole apartment, and on looking into a closet, I discovered a quantity of mouldy, foreign apparel. This, as I found out next morning, had been left there as plague-stricken by a gentleman who, some days previously, had nearly died of small-pox in this very room. Fortunately I escaped an attack of the malady.
I paid a visit to the Corean Legation in the Tartar quarter of the city. It was customary before the war for the King of Corea to send an annual embassy of tribute-bearers to Peking. The first detachment of the embassy had just arrived before I quitted the capital. There were but a few members present at the Legation at the time of my visit, and the apartments in which they dwelt were so scrupulously clean that I almost ​wished that I had left my shoes at the doorway, in my fear of soiling the white straw mats. I was also most favourably impress- ed with the spotless purity of their garments, which were almost entirely of white. It was with great difficulty, however, that 1 secured an illustration, but it was on that account all the more prized.
After my return from the Ming tombs, H. B. M.'s Minister, the late Sir Thomas Wall, kindly invited me to stay at the Legation, but I had promised Thomas to remain in his house, and although unfortunate in some respects, he proved thor- oughly honest, and did his best to make me comfortable.
I bought a Mongolian pony to save me time in exploring the city, and a saddle and bridle were kindly lent to me by a friend ; but the brute was a large-boned, large-headed animal with a great round belly, over which, for want of a crupper, the saddle- girths were always sliding. It had, too, an enormous appetite, at least, so said the groom whom I employed. The first night it consumed its bed, and when I examined it in the morning it seemed to be hungry still, for it had barked the tree to which it was tethered, and had, besides this, devoured about five shil- lings' worth of millet-bran, and so forth. I soon found out that I was being fleeced by the stable-boy, who had a pony of his own in the next house, and had determined to feed it at my expense.
The Pekingese have a strange mode of shoeing their horses. They pull three feet together with cords, and leave the hoof that is to be shod, free. Then they sling the animal bodily up between two posts, and so complete the task in comfort and safety.
In the plan of the city of Peking there is every evidence of
$_{Pialo,orMemorialArch,Peking.}$
cation. The ground-plan of the Imperial buildings is in most respects identical with the ground-plans of the great temples and tombs of the country. So much alike are they, even in the style and arrangement of their edifices, that a palace, with scarcely any alteration, might be at once converted into a Bud- dhist temple. Thus we find that the Great Yung-ho-Kung Lamasary of the Mongols in the north-east quarter of the city, was at one time the residence of the son and successor of Kang-hi. The chief halls of the Imperial palace — if we may judge from the glimpse one gets of their lofty roofs when one stands on the city wall— -are three in number, extending from the Chien-men to Prospect Hill, and in every instance are ap- proached by a triple gateway. The like order prevails at the Ming tombs. There one finds an equal number of halls, with a triple doorway in front of each; while the temple and domestic archi- tecture throughout the north of China is based upon the same plan. In the latter case there are three courts, divided from each other by halls, the apartments of the domestics being ranged about the outer courts, while the innermost of the three is devoted to family use.
It is interesting to observe the evidences which crop up every- where, showing the universal sacredness of the numbers three and nine. Thus at Peking, the gates with which the outer wall of the Tartar city is pierced form together a multiple of three, and the sacred person of the Emperor can only be ap- proached, even by his highest officers, after three times three prostrations. The Temple of Heaven, too, in the Chinese city, with its triple roof, the triple terraces of its marble altars and the rest of its mystic symbolism throughout, points either to three or its multiples. ​The Rev. Joseph Edkins was, I believe, the first to draw attention to the symbolical architecture of the Temple of Hea- ven, and to the importance which the Chinese themselves attach to the southern open altar, as the most sacred of all Chinese religious structures. There, at the winter solstice, the Emperor himself makes burnt-offerings, just as the patriarchs did of old, to the supreme Lord of Heaven. In the city of Foochow, on the southern side of the walled enclosure, are two hills, one known as Wu-shih-shan, and the other as Kui-shen-shan, or the ^'Hill of the Nine Genii." On the top of the former there is an open altar — a simple erection of rude unhewn stone, ap- proached first by a flight of eighteen steps, and finally by three steps, cut into the face of the rock. This altar is reputed to be very ancient, and to it the Governor-General of the province repairs at certain seasons of the year as the representative of the Emperor, and there offers up burnt-sacrifices to heaven. In this granite table, covered with a simple square stone vessel filled with ashes, we have the sacrificial altar in what is probably its most ancient Chinese form. The southern altar at Peking bears a wonderful resemblance to Mount Meru, the centre of the Buddhist universe, round which all the heavenly bodies are supposed to move ; and there we find tablets of sun, moon and stars arranged around the second terrace of the altar, according to the Chinese system of astronomy.
The city of Peking, or rather the Tartar portion of it, is laid out with an almost perfect symmetry. The sacred purple city stands nearly in the centre, and there are three main streets, which run from north to south. One of these streets leads direct to the palace-gates, and the other two are nearly equi- distant from it on either side ; while myriads of minor thorough- fares and lanes intersect one another in the spaces between. ​but are always either parallel with or at right angles to the three main roads. Viewed from any stand-point on the outer wall, the whole scene is disappointing. With the exception of the palace buildings, the Buddhist shrines, the Temple of Heaven, the Roman Catholic Cathedral and the official yamens, the houses never rise above the low, modest, uniform level prescribed for them by law. Much, too, that is ruinous and dilapidated pre- sents itself to the gaze. Here and there we see open spaces and green trees that shade the buildings of the rich; but again the eye wearies of its wanderings over hundreds of acres of tiles and walls all of one stereotyped pattern, and cannot help noticing that the isolation of the Chinese begins with the family unit at home. There stands the sacred dwelling of the mighty Emperor, walled round and round ; his person protected from the gaze of the outer world by countless courts and *' halls of sacred harmony"; and one can note the same exclusiveness carried out in all the dwellings of his people. Each residence is enclos- ed in a wall of its own, and a single outer entrance gives access to courts and reception-rooms, beyond which the most favoured guest may not intrude to violate by his mere presence the sanctity of the domicile. There are, of course, tens of thousands of houses and hovels where this arrangement cannot be observed, but where the people, nevertheless, manage to sustain a sort of dignified isolation by investing themselves with an air of self-importance, which the very street beggars never wholly lay aside. These, if they be Manchus, are proud at any rate of their sheepskin coats; or if they be not, then the more fugitive covering of mud, which is all that hides their nakedness, is still carried with a sort of stolid solemnity which would be ludicrous were it not for their misfortunes.
I had the good fortune while in the metropolis to be introduced ​by Dr. Martin, President of the Imperial Tungwen Col- lege, to Prince Kung and the other distinguished members of the Chinese Government ; and they wisely availed themselves of my presence to have their portraits taken at the Tsungli-yamen, or Chinese Foreign Office. Prince Kung, as most of my readers are aware, is a younger brother of the late Emperor Hien-fung. He holds several high appointments, military as well as civil, and in particular he is a member of the Supreme Council — a department of the State which most nearly resembles the Cabi- net in our own constitution. He has been for over a quarter of a century Chief Minister of Foreign Affairs and Chancellor of the Empire. He is, too, a man esteemed by all who know him, quick in apprehension, comparatively liberal in his views, and regarded by some as the head of that small party of politi- cians who favour progress in China.
The creation of the Tsungli-yamen, or Foreign Board, was one of the important results which followed the ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin. Up to that time all foreign diplomatic correspondence had been carried on through the Colonial Office, where the great Powers were practically placed on a level with the Central Asian dependencies of the Empire. This yamen stands next to the Imperial College, where a staff of foreign professors is now employed in instructing Chinese students in European languages, literature and science. Accompanied by one of these professors, who kindly undertook to be my inter- preter, I found myself one morning entering a low narrow doorway through a dead wall. After making our way along a number of courts, studded with rockeries, flowers and ponds, and after passing down dingy corridors in dismal disrepair, we at length stood beneath the shade of an old tree, and in front
$_{MILITARYMANDARIN2.}$
from time to time discussed. We had barely time to glance at the painted pillars, the curved roofs and carved windows, when a venerable noble issued from behind a bamboo screen that concealed a narrow doorway, and accorded us a quiet, courteous welcome.
The Prince himself had not arrived ; but Wen-siang, Paou-keun and Shen-kwe-fen, members, all of them, at that time, of the Grand Council, were already in attendance. Wen-siang was well known in diplomatic circles as a statesman endowed with intellectual powers of a high order, and as one of the foremost ministers of his age. It is said of him, that, in reply to the urgent repre- sentations of a foreigner who was clamouring for Chinese pro- gress, he delivered himself of the following prophecy, which has not yet, however, been fulfilled:— "Give China time, and her progress will be both rapid and overwhelming in its results ; so much so, that those who were foremost with the plea for pro- gress will be sighing for the good old times." This transforma- tion may be looming in the far-off distance, like some unknown star whose light is travelling through the immeasurable regions of space, but has not yet reached our own sphere. China has had her ages of flint and bronze ; and her vast mineral resources tell us that she is yet destined to enter upon all that is implied in an age of coal and iron.
Wen-siang and Paou-keun are Manchus, while Shen-kwe- fen is one of the Chinese members of the Grand Council of State.
Cheng-lin, Tung-sean and Maou-cheng-he, ministers of the Foreign Board were also present. Tung-sean is the author of many valuable works. One of these, on the hydrography of northern China, was in the press at the time of my visit; and ​as the reader will have gathered from my account of the inun- dations, his treatise is likely to be of great value, provided that its suggestions, if any, for draining the country and restoring the broken embankments can, or rather will, be carried out. The ministers wore simple robes of variously-coloured satin, open in front and caught in by a band at the waist ; collars of pale blue silk tapering down from the neck to the shoulders, and thick-soled black satin boots. This costume was extremely picturesque, and what is of far greater importance, the ministers, most of them, were as fine-looking men as ever our own Cabinet can boast. All of them had an air of quiet, dignified repose.
The arrival of Prince Kung on the scene cut short our gen- eral conversation. The Prince for a few minutes kept me in a pleasant talk, enquiring about my travels and about photography, and manifesting considerable interest in the process of taking a likeness. He is a man of middle stature, and of rather slender frame ; his appearance, indeed, did not impress me so favourably as did that of the other members of the Cabinet; yet he had what phrenologists would describe as a splendid head. His eyes were penetrating, and his face, when in repose, wore an expres- sion of sullen resolution. As I looked upon him, I wondered whether he felt the burden of the responsibility which he shared with the ministers around, in guiding the destinies of so many millions of the human race ; or whether he and his distinguished colleagues were able to look with complacency upon the present state of the Empire and its people.
These men have had many and great difficulties to contend against in their time. Foreign war, civil insurrection, famine, floods and the rapacity of their officials in different quarters of
$_{MEMBERSOFTHETSUNGLIYAMEN,PEKING.}$
never be properly felt and acknowledged in the more distant portions of China, until each remotest province of that vast kingdom shall have been united to Peking by railways and by a network of telegraphic nerves.
Perhaps the most grave and distinguished-looking member of the group now before me was Maou-cheng-he. This man's schol- arly attainments had won him the highest post of literary fame, and formerly he had been chief judge of the metropolitan Uter- ary examinations.
Extraordinary is the honour which the Chinese attach to literary championship, and to the achievement of the Chong-iin or Han-lin degree, which is conferred by the Peking examiners. At the triennial examination of 1871 a man from Shun-kak district, in the Kwang-tung province, carried off the Chong-iin. His family name was Leung. Now this literary distinction had been obtained by a Kwang-tung scholar some half a century before, and he was the first who achieved that success during a period of 200 years. Thus the new victory of their own candidate was hailed by the men of Kwang-tung as a great historical event. It was reported, however, that Mr. Leung had after all obtained the honour by a lucky "fluke." As one of a triad of chosen scholars of the Empire, he produced the com- position which was to decide his claims. There were nine es- says in all, and these, when they had been submitted to the Han-lin examiners, were sent by them to the Empress Dowager (the Emperor being under age) to have their own award for- mally confirmed. The work of greatest merit was placed upper- most; but the old lady, who had an imperial will of her own, felt anxious to thwart the decision of the learned pundits ; and, as chance would have it, the sunlight fell on the chosen manuscript, ​and she discovered a flaw, a thinness in the paper, indi- cating a place in the composition where one character had been erased and another substituted. The Empress rated the exam- iners for allowing such slovenly work to pass, and proclaimed Leung the victor. The superstitious Cantonese declared that it was a divine choice, that the sunbeam was a messenger sent by Heaven to point out the blemish in the essay at first selected for the prize.
Mr. Leung reached Canton in May, 1872, and was received there by the local authorities with the highest possible honours. All the families who bore the name of Leung (and who had also means to afford it) paid the Chong-tin large sums of money to be permitted to come and worship at his ancestral hall. By this means they established a spurious claim to relationship and as soon as the ceremony was over, were allowed to place tablets above the entrances of their own halls inscribed with the title Chong-iin. An uncle of the successful wrangler, uniting an exalted sense of his duty to his family with a laudable desire to repair • his own fortune, forestalled the happy Chong-iin, and acted as his deputy before his arrival, in visiting sundry halls. For such honourable service this obliging relative at times received a thousand dollars, and his nephew, for the sake of the family name, had to sanction the steps thus prematurely adopted to spread his fame abroad. To show the great esteem in which such a man is held by the Chinese, I may add that a brother of Mr. Leung rented a house in Canton, and its owner hearing that he was the brother of the famous Chong-iin, made him a free gift of the tenement.
After partaking of tea with one or two of the members of the Cabinet, and after some general talk on topics of common
$_{GreatGateway,Templeofconfucius,Peking.}$
Peking undescribed, as my aim is rather to convey a general impression of the condition of the country and of its people as we find them now-a-days, than to enter into minute details. I can therefore only cast a passing glance at a few places of public importance. The Confucian Temple covers a wide area, and like all palaces, shrines and even houses, is completely walled around. The main gateway which leads into the sacred enclosure is presented in the accompanying picture. This gateway is approached, as were the ancient shrines of Greece and Rome, through an avenue of venerable cypress trees; and the whole establishment forms perhaps the most imposing specimen of purely Chinese architecture to be found among the ornaments of the capital. The triple approach and the balustrading are of sculptured marble; while the pillars and other portions of the gateway are of more perishable materials — wood, glazed earthen- ware and brick. On either side are groves of marble tablets, bearing the names of the successful Han-lin scholars for many centuries back; and that one to the left, supported upon the back of a tortoise, was set up here when Marco Polo was in China. Within this gate stand the celebrated stone drums, inscribed with stanzas, cut nearly 2,000 years ago, in primi- tive form of Chinese writing. Thus these drums prove the antiquity at once of the poetry and of the character in which that has been engraved. These inscriptions have been translated by Dr. S. W. Bushell, the gentleman who has also discovered the site of the famous city of Shang-tu, referred to by Coleridge as Xanadu, and spoken of by Marco Polo as the northern capital of the Yuen dynasty. The great hall within simply contains the tablet of China's chief sage and those of twenty-two of his most distinguished followers. The spirits of the departed great are ​supposed to reside in their tablets, and hence annually, at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, sheep and oxen fall in sacrifice in front of this honoured shrine of literature.
Close to the Confucian Temple stands the Kwo-tze-keen, or National University; and there, ranged around the Pi-yung-kung, or Hall of the Classics, are 200 tablets of stone inscribed with the complete text of the nine sacred books.
The Observatory has been set up on the wall on the eastern side of the Tartar city. Here, in addition to the colossal astro- nomical instruments erected by the Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century, we find two other instruments in a court below, which the Chinese made for themselves towards the close of the thirteenth century, when the Yuen dynasty was on the throne. Possibly some elements of European science may have been brought to bear on the construction of even these instru- ments, although the characters and divisions engraved on their splendid bronze circles point only to the Chinese method of dividing the year, and to the state of Chinese astronomy at the time. Yet Marco Polo must have been in the north of China at about the period of their manufacture, or at any rate John de Carvino was there, for he, under Pope Clement V., became bishop of Cambalu (Peking) about 1290 A. D., and perhaps, with his numerous staff of priests, he introduced some knowledge of Western art. The late Mr. Wylie (than whom there was probably no better authority) was with me when I examined these instru- ments, and was of opinion that they are Chinese, and that they were produced by Ko-show-king, one of the most famous astron- omers of China. One of them is an astrolaba, furnished beneath with a splendid sun-dial, which has long since lost its gnomon. The whole, indeed, consists of three astrolabae, one partly move-
$_{AncientAstronomicalInstrumentsontheWallofPeking.}$
turning on a centre as a meridian circle, and the third the azi- muth circle.
The other instrument is an armillary sphere, supported by chained dragons, of most beautiful workmanship and design. This instrument is a marvellous specimen of the perfection to which the Chinese must, even then, have brought the art of casting in bronze. The horizon is inscribed with the twelve cyclical characters, into which the Chinese divide the day and night. Outside the ring these characters appear again, paired with eight characters of the denary cycle, and four names of the eight dia- grams of the book of changes, denoting the points of the com- pass ; while the inside of the ring bears the names of the twelve States into which China, in ancient times, was portioned out. An equatorial circle, a double-ring ecliptic, an equinoctial colure and a double-ring colure are adjusted with the horizon ring. The equator is engraved with constellations of unknown anti- quity; while the ecliptic is marked off into twenty-four equal spaces, corresponding to the divisions of the year. All the circles are divided into 365I degrees, for the days of the year; while each degree is subdivided into 100 parts, as for everything less than a degree the centenary scale prevailed at that period. I take these instruments to be of great interest, as indicating the state of astronomical science in China at about the end of the thirteenth century.
While in Peking I made the acquaintance of many educated and intelligent natives, one of whom accompanied an English physician and myself on an excursion to the ruins of the Summer Palace. With another gentleman, Mr. Yang, I became consider- ably intimate; and in this way enjoyed some opportunity of seeing the dwellings and domestic life of the upper classes in the capital. Both my friends were devoted to photography; but ​ Yang, not content with his triumphs in that branch of science, frequently carried his researches and experiments to a pitch that caused the members of his multitudinous household no less in- convenience than alarm. Yang was a fine sample of the modern Chinese savant — fat, good-natured and contented; but much inclined to take short cuts to scientific knowledge, and to esteem his own incomplete and hap-hazard achievements the results of marvellously perfect intelligence. His house, like most others in China, was approached through a lane hedged in by high brick walls on either side, so that there was nothing to be seen of it from without save the small doorway and a low brick par- tition about six feet beyond the threshold — the latter intend- ed to prevent the ingress of the spirits of the dead. Within there was the usual array of courts and halls, reached by narrow vine-shaded corridors ; but each court was tastefully laid out with rockeries, flowers, fish-ponds, bridges and pavilions. Really the place was very picturesque and admirably suited to the disposition of a people affecting seclusion and the pleasures of family life ; and who (so far as the women are concerned) know little or nothing of the world in which they live, beyond what they gather within the walls of their own abode.
Here I was, then, admitted at last into the sacred precincts of the mysterious Chinese dwelling. Its proprietor was an ama- teur, not merely of photography, but of chemistry and electricity too ; and he had a laboratory fitted up in the ladies ' quarter. In one corner of this laboratory stood a black carved bedstead, curtained with silk and pillowed with wood; while a carved bench, also of black wood, supported a heterogeneous collection of instruments, chemical, electrical and photographic, besides Chinese and European books. The walls were garnished with enlarged photographs of Yang's family and friends. In a small ​
$_{MANCHUTARTARLADY.}$
$_{MANCHULADYANDMIAD.}$
steam saw-mill, with which the owner had achieved wonders in the short space of a single day.
The machine, indeed, had never enjoyed but that one chance of distinguishing itself; for the Pekingese, disturbed by the whirr of the engine, scaled the walls with ladders, clustered on to the roofs and compelled the startled proprietor to abandon his un- dertaking. There, then, stood the motionless mill, with one or two dejected fowls perched upon its cylinder — a monster whom long familiarity had taught even the poultry to despise. I saw the ladies several times while I was teaching my friend how to concoct nitrate of silver and other photographic chemicals. Some of these women were handsome, and all were dressed in rich satins; but the following information which I received from an English lady (Mrs. Edkins), who was much esteemed, and deser- vedly so, for her good works among the natives, will give further insight into the daily life of the Pekingese ladies.
Many Chinese ladies spend a great portion of their time in gossiping, smoking and gambling — very unlady-like occupations my fair readers will exclaim ; nevertheless, these accomplishments, taken either singly or collectively, require years of assiduous training before they can be practised with that perfection which prevails in polite circles in China. Gambling, it is to be regret- ted, is by far the most favourite pastime, and it is perhaps but cold comfort to reflect that this vice is not monopolised by the ladies of Cathay, but that it is their lords who set them the example. They never dream of playing except for money; and when they have no visitors of their own rank to gamble with, they call up the domestics and play with them. Poorer women meet at some gaming den, and there manage to squander considerable sums of money ; thus affording their ​ devoted husbands at the end of the year, when debts must be discharged which they are unable to pay, an excuse for committing suicide.
The married lady rises early, and first sees that tea is pre- pared for her husband, as well as some hot water for his morning bath The same attention is also exacted by the mother-in-law; for she is always present, like the guardian angel of her son. As a rule, however, the mother-in-law is not held to be an angel by the wife, who, during the lifetime of her husband's mother, has to be a very drudge in the house. It may be unkind to relate it, but the truth must be told: the ladies in the morning fly about with shoes down at heel — that is, the Tartars do, who have not small feet — dressed en deshabille^ and shouting out their orders to the domestic slaves. In short, a general uproar prevails in many Chinese households until everything for the elaborate toilet has been procured.
Each lady has generally one or two maids, besides a small slave-girl who waits on these maids and trims and lights her mistress's pipe. The dressing of a lady's hair occupies her atten- dants from one to two hours ; then a white paste is prepared and daubed over her face and neck, and this, when dry, is smoothed and polished once. Afterwards a blush of rose-powder is appHed to the cheeks and eyelids, the surplus rouge remaining on the lady's palm, as a rose-pink on the hand is greatly esteemed. Next they dye the nails red with the blossom of a certain flower, and finally they dress for the day. Many of them have chig- nons and false hair; but no hair-dyes are used, for raven hair is common and golden tresses are not in repute. Numbers of ladies pass a portion of their time in embroidering shoes, purses, handkerchiefs and such like gear; while before marriage, nearly
$_{NativeActors.}$
$_{NativeActors.}$
$_{Manchu-TartarBrideandMaid.}$
of wedding one whom probably they have never yet seen, and for whom they can never care. Women of education —there are, alas ! but a few — occasionally hire educated widows in needy circumstances to read novels or plays to them. Women capable of reading in this way can make a very comfortable living. Story-tellers and ballad-singers are also employed to entertain them in the courts of their houses.
The evenings they generally spend in their court-yards, smok- ing and watching the amusements of the children; and on these occasions conjurors, Punch-and-Judy men and ventrilo- quists are much in demand. The families retire early to rest, the ladies never caring to spoil their eyes by working under the light of a lamp. Opium-smoking is freely indulged in by many women in China. The romance of love is not unknown in the land, although few marriages are ever celebrated where the contracting parties have formed an attachment, or even seen each other, before their wedding-day.
On leaving Yang's dwelling, I had always to make my way across a flooded court, where a steam mining-pump had once been set going and had deluged the premises before it could be stopped. My friend, when 1 took my departure, was daily expecting the complete apparatus for a small gas-work, to sup- ply his house with gas — a feat which I believe he successfully accomplished without blowing up his abode.
Pekingese Enamelling. — There are but one or two shops in Peking where the art of enamelling is carried on. The oldest enamelled vases were made during the Ta-ming dynasty, about three centuries ago; but these are said to be inferior to what were produced about 200 years later, when Kien-lung was on the throne. Within the last quarter of a century the art has been revived. One of the best shops for such work stood not ​far from the French Legation, and was — strangely enough — kept by a Manchu named Kwan.
The first part of the process consists in forming a copper vase of the desired form, partly beaten into shape and partly soldered. The design for the enamelled flowers and figures is then traced on to the copper by a native artist, and afterwards all the lines engraved are replaced by strips of copper, soldered hard on to the vase, and rather thicker than the depth of the enamel which they are destined to contain. The materials used for soldering are borax and silver, which require a higher temperature for fusion than the enamel itself. The design is now filled in with the various coloured enamels, reduced to a state of powder and made into a paste by the admixture of water. The enamel powders are said to be prepared by a secret process, known only to one man in Peking, who sells them in a solid form, like slabs of different coloured glass. The delicate operation of filling in the coloured powders is chiefly carried on by boys, who manage to blend the colours with wonderful perfection. After the design has been filled in, the vase is next subjected to a heat that fuses the enamel. Imperfections are then filled up and the whole is fused again. This operation is repeated three times, and then the vase is ready to be filed, ground and polished. The grinding and polishing are conducted on a rude lathe, and when completed the vase is gilt. Some of the largest and finest vases sell for thousands of taels and are much prized by the Chinese, as well as among foreigners.
On October i8th I set out with two friends for the Sum- mer Palace at Yuen-ming-Yuen, about eight miles to the north-west of Peking. One of our party, Mr. Wang, to whom
$_{MarbleBridgeYuen-Ming-Yuen.}$
$_{TheBronzeTemple,Yuen-Ming-Yuen.}$
by a mounted retainer, while Dr. Dudgeon and I rode ponies. On the way, near the Imperial Palace, we fell in with a proces- sion of sixty-four men, bearing a huge sedan, wherein sat fourteen friends of Wang, his colleagues at the Board of Works. These gentlemen were testing the strength of the chair, which they had prepared to convey the remains of an Imperial princess to sepulture. Something this, on the principle of placing a railway director in front of every train! A great vase filled to the brim with water had been set up in the centre of the sedan in order to train the bearers to maintain an accurate level. Whether the tea and refreshments and the general hilarity of the party had anything to do with this official investigation, I am at a loss to determine, but at any rate the duties of the Board, apart from their extreme useful- ness, appeared to be far from disagreeable. Further on the road I had a race with a cavalry officer, and I managed to to get ahead of him, but not until the saddle of my trusty steed was nearly over its shoulders.
By four o'clock we had reached the grounds of the palace, and there we found a wilderness of ruin and devastation which it was piteous to behold. Marble slabs and sculptured orna- ments that had graced one of the finest scenes in China, now lay scattered everywhere among the debris and weeds. But there were some of the monuments which had defied the hand of the invaders, or had been spared, let us hope, on account of their beauty. Among these is a marble bridge on seventeen arches, which spans a lotus-lake. This was still in perfect preservation; and in the far distance, too, the great temple on Wan-show-shan could be seen sparkling intact in the sunlight. At the base of this pile were a multitude of splendid statues. ​pagodas and other ornaments, overthrown during the fearful raid of the allies. Enough yet remained, however, to give some faint notion of the untold wealth and labour that must have been lavished on this Imperial retreat. The Summer Palace lay in ruins within its boundary walls, just as it was looted and left. It is a pity that redress for a breach of treaty obligations was not sought by some less destructive mode than this; by some real achievement, which would have impressed the Chinese with exalted ideas of our civilisation as much as it terrified them with the awfulness of our power. If, for example, the capital had been held long enough to show what improvements a wise and liberal administration could, even in a short time, accomplish in the condition of the people and the country; then after a suitable indemnity had been paid for the lesson which we had been forced to convey, we might have withdrawn.
Wang made not a single allusion to the wreck around him. He admired, indeed, what little was left of the former splen- dour of the palace; but it was impossible to fathom his real sentiments, for a Chinaman, when interrogated, will never disclose what he thinks. The buildings were of purely Chinese design and conception.
At the monastery of Wo-foh-sze, or "the Sleeping Buddha," we found a resting-place for the night. The old Lama here was complaining of bad times. There was not enough land, he said, to support the establishment, and that though every monk enjoyed a yearly grant of twelve taels (equal to about £jt los, of our money) from the Peking Board of Rites. But of late years there have been but few of the members of the Imperial family to bury — a ceremony for which this esta-
$_{Femalecompressedfoot,andnaturalfoot.}$
Sculptured Panel on Buddhist Cenotaph, Peking.
$_{Wo-foh-szeMonastery,YuenMingYuen.}$
though furnished with the usual simplicity, were wonderfully clean and well kept.
There are many institutions and objects of interest in Peking, but to describe even the most prominent among them would require a volume by itself.
The most remarkable, and perhaps the finest, monument in all China is the marble cenotaph erected over the robes and relics of the Banjin Lama of Thibet. This edifice stands in the grounds of the Hwang-She monastery, about a mile beyond the north wall of Peking. When on my way to inspect it I witnessed a review of the northern army on the Anting plain. Some thousands of troops, infantry as well as cavalry, were in the field, and at a distance they made a warlike and imposing show, but nearer examination always seems to me to alter one's ideas of the greatness of human institutions, and more especially so where Chinese are concerned. Thus a close view of one of their river gun-boats revealed to me that a stand of rifles which occupied a prominent place on its deck was all constructed of wood; and the ancient foes of China have more than once in the same way advanced with caution to surprise a tented camp, and dis- covered that the tents were but white-washed clay mounds in undisturbed possession of the field. Thus also on the Anting plain, beneath the flaunting banners, we found the men armed with the old matchlocks, or with bows and arrows, and carrying huge basket-work shields painted with the faces of ogres, to strike terror into the hearts of a foe. For all that, evidences of military reform were not altogether wanting. Thus there were modern field-pieces, modern rifles, fair target-practice, and above all, desperate efforts to maintain discipline and order. At the same time I could not help thinking of Le-hung-chang (to ​whom I had the honour of being introduced at Tientsin), the founder of the first arsenal on a foreign type in China, and the companion in arms of Colonel Gordon and Tseng-kwo-fan. Per- sonally Le is tall, resolute and calm, and altogether a fine speci- men of his race. Perhaps he entertains an exaggerated belief in the capabilities of his nation ; but at the same time he is deeply conscious of the power of Western kingdoms, and apparently desires to fathom the secrets of their superiority. On one occasion, when filled with admiration of the beauty and genius displayed in a piece of foreign mechanism, he exclaimed, *'How wonderful! how comes it that such inventions and discoveries are always foreign? It must be something different in the con- stitution of our minds that causes us to remain as we were. " But after all, perhaps he may have intended to compliment his auditors, rather than to give genuine expression to his opinions. He probably knows that for untold centuries there has been little or no opportunity for the development of genius in China. The light of truth has been sought for only in the dark pages of past history; and the Chinese, in their efforts to attain to the perfection of their mythical kings and of the maxims em- bodied in their classics, have set up an inquisition which perforce suppresses originality and uproots invention like a noxious weed. We are now at the grand cenotaph; but after all, what is there in its massive proportions, its grotesque sculptures, its golden crown and its shady groves of cypress and pine that will compare in interest with the daily life and aspirations of the meanest coolie who here comes to gaze with reverent awe and to place his simple votive offering before the temple shrine ! The story of this building is a short one. The broad white marble base which gleams in the sunlight covers the relics of a
$_{BuddhistTemple,Yuen-Ming-Yuen.}$
this human deity sat in state with his face to the East. In another apartment we see the bed on which his Holiness expired ; poisoned, as is said, by a jealous Emperor towards the end of the eighteenth century, the monarch treating his victim with the most stately courtesy to the last, and even worshipping and glori- fying him in public, while his sacrifice was being secretly prepared. The late Mr. Wylie, of the London Bible Society, who was journeying into the Northern Provinces, accompanied me to the Great Wall; and Mr. Welmer, a Russian gentleman, also joined our party. Outside the Anting plain we halted at an inn called " The Gem of Prosperity," and, praise be to the Board of Works ! we there found men repairing the roads. At Ma-teen there was a sheep- market, and Mongols disposing of their flocks. It is strange to note the strong nomadic tendencies of this race. In the Mongol quarter at Peking I have seen them actually place their beasts of burden inside the apartments of the house they hired, and pitch their own tent in the court outside. The condition of the sheep testified to the richness of the Mongolian pastures ; while the shepherds, clad in sheep-skin coats, were a hardy, raw-boned-looking race. At Sha-ho village, in the inn of "Pa- triotic Perfection," we made a second halt. Here in our chamber we found the maxim, written up on a board, '*A11 who seek wealth by the only pure principles will find it." Judging by this doc- trine our host must have been a sad ruffian, for the poverty of his surroundings bore witness that he, for his part, must have sought after riches in some very questionable channel. We spent the night at Suy-Shan Inn, Nankow. It was truly a wretched place : the "grand chamber" measured about eight feet across, and was supplied with the usual brick bed, having an oven underneath it. In a room of this sort the fire is usually lit at night, and ​is made up of charcoal, so that persons sleeping there are apt to be poisoned by the fumes. Such a calamity indeed at times will occur. In other respects those who are used to a brick bed and a billet of wood for a pillow may sleep comfortably enough; unless by chance the bricks become red-hot, and then one is apt to be done brown. We left Nankow at six o'clock in the morning, and followed the old Mongol road formed by blocks of prophyry and marble. Through the pass our convey- ances were litters slung between two mules, one in front and the other behind. Although there is here a great traffic between Thibet, Mongolia, Russia and China, the road in many places was all but impassable, not to say extremely dangerous, skirting as it does precipitous rocks where the slip of a hoof on the part of either mule might end in a fatal accident. We were constantly falling in with long trains of camels, mules and donkeys, all heavily laden, some with brick-tea for the Mongolian and Russian markets, while others bore produce to the capital from the outer dependencies of China. At Kew-yung-kwan, an inner spur of the Great Wall sweeps across the pass; and here, too, is the old arch which has been rendered famous by Mr. Wylie's successful labours in translating the Buddhist prayer inscribed in six different languages on its inner wall. On this arch, too, we find bas-reliefs representing the Kings of the Devas in Buddhist mythology. The structure is supposed to have been erected during the Yuen dynasty, and is said originally to have carried a pagoda on its summit; but this was afterwards taken down by the Mings, to propitiate the Mongol tribes. I have on an- other page drawn attention to the Indian mythological figures with which this arch is adorned, and Mr. Wylie's notice of the inscription will be found in the *' Journal of the Royal Asiatic
$_{SculpturedTerrace,Yuen-Ming-Yuen.}$
take one up this pass, for they will impose on foreigners in every possible way. Thus, when about to struggle through the rough parts of the roughest road in the world, they will ask for a guide a-piece to pilot them over each rock and boulder that has to be crossed. It always happens that these guides are themselves most extortionate characters, and as the way grows more difficult some fresh demand is certain to be put forward. Our friend, Mr. Welmer, had arranged everything with our men before we left Peking, but still they made most pertinacious efforts to extort more money from us.
At the Great Wall I reluctantly parted from Mr. Wylie, who was one of the most distinguished and modest travellers it has been my good fortune to meet.
The Wall has often been described, but I confess that it dis- appointed me. It is simply a gigantic, useless stone fence, climbing the hills and dipping down into the valleys. At the point I visited it has been frequently repaired, and only attained to its present massive proportions during the Ming dynasty. That piece of it which we see in the Nankow pass at Pan-ta- ling is not so old by several centuries as the outer wall, which was built by Tsin-she-whang, B. C. 213.* In its route of over 1,000 miles there are some portions of the wall which from neglect have now fallen into decay ; but it was never much more than a clay mound even in its best parts, faced with sun-dried bricks, and in the passes, as at Pan-ta-ling, with stone. It now only stands as a colossal monument of misdirected human labour, and of the genius which the Chinese have ever displayed in raising costly barriers to shut out barbarians from Cathay. In
vain were all these toilsome precautions! The danger that was threatening them within the country they all the while failed to guard against, and from this very cause at last the native dynasty had to succumb before an alien race. To understand this we must remember that a rebel wrested the throne from the last Chinese Emperor, and that, when this usurper had been in turn dethron- ed, the Manchus, taking advantage of ^the existing disorder, came in and conquered China.
On my return journey I fell in with a gang of convicts, heavily chained and sent adrift to seek a precarious living in the pass. There they spent existence, shut out from the villages and shunned by all. One who had charge of the rest, rode an ass. Half the hair had been rubbed off this poor brute's back by the irons of its rider, and even respectable donkeys as they passed trains, would hold no intercourse with it. Many of the traders we met were fine-looking men, and few went by us without bestowing a kindly salutation.
At Nankow I put up again at the inn, and there found a native merchant in possession of the best room. He politely offered to vacate it in my favour, but this I, of course, refused to allow, contenting myself with an apartment where Ahong, having first obtained the unwilling consent of the landlord, set to with a half-naked slave to reduce the table and chair until they disclosed the wood of which they were made. There were also many spider-webs, but we left these undisturbed, for their bloated occupants were feasting on the flies with which the room was infested. The merchant had a train of fourteen mules, an elegant sedan, and a troop of muleteers, who were carousing in the next apartment. A merry time they had of it! One of them was still gesticulating like a Chinese stage-
$_{CHINESEBRONZELIONYUEN-MING-YUEN.}$
$_{FUNERALBANNERMEN.}$
In the morning I was awakened by the clang of a smith's anvil, and found that the smith was one of the many travelling workmen who abound in Cathay. He was making knives and reaping-hooks, and had contrived a simple forge by attaching a tube to his air-pump, passing this beneath the ground, and then bringing up the end so as to play through the fire which lay in a hollow in the soil. There was also a Mahommedan inn at Nankow, and there the host and his attendants were remarkable for their Indian physiognomies. At the same place, too, I found a guide, who had distinguished himself by show- ing visitors through the pass. This individual had fallen heir to a pair of enormous foreign boots, which he kept on his feet by pads and swathes of cloth. He had, besides, obtained a number of certificates from his patrons, which, almost without exception, described him as a great ruffian. These certificates he presented for my inspection with an evident air of pride. He also said that his sympathies were not Chinese, and pointing to his boots, declared that he was a foreigner like myself.
From Nankow I proceeded on to the Ming tombs. For the information of those among my readers who may still be unacquainted with the great burial-ground where thirteen Em- perors of the Ming dynasty were interred, I will give a brief summary of my experiences in that place.
It will be remembered that Nanking, the ancient capital, where the founder of the Ming dynasty established his court, contains the first mausoleum of those Kings — a mausoleum in almost every particular resembling the tombs of the same line in the valley thirty miles north of Peking. These tombs lie at the foot of a semi-circle of hills, which has something like a three miles' radius. ​The temple of Chingtsoo, who reigned with the national designation of Yung-lo, from 1403 till his death in 1424, is by- far the finest of these Imperial resting-places. It is approached through an avenue of colossal animals and warriors sculptured in stone, and although some of the figures are in attitudes of perfect repose, well becoming in the guardians of the illus- trious dead, yet when we view them as the finest specimens of sculpture which China has to show, we must acknowledge that her ancient art falls short of our own modern standard. I doubt, however, whether Chinese artists of the present day could produce anything, I do not say better, but even so good as these Ming statues. The great tomb may be set down in most respects as a counterpart of the architecture which prevails in the temples, the palaces and even the dwellings in China. I was pleased to find that Mr. Simpson, in his interesting account of his tour round the world, has also noticed this similarity. It must of necessity be so, as the Chinese look upon such a tomb as this as the palace of the spirit of Yung-lo. The animals and warriors form his retinue, while offerings to his soul are annually made at the shrine in the great sacrificial hall. In the same way with their gods : the temples are the palaces wherein the deities reside, and indeed the word "kung," used to designate Taouist temples, signifies **a palace." *
The Emperors of the present dynasty, who drove the Mings from their dominions, still offer sacrifices at the tombs of those sovereigns; and this they do, it may be, out of mere state policy, or perhaps because the spirits of the departed monarchs are supposed to exercise an influence over the Imperial throne.
Although Chinese buildings, in their general plan, present
$_{AvenueleadingtotheMingTombs,NorthofPeking.}$
many points of similarity, differences nevertheless exist in the number of their courts, and in the details of the various kinds of edifices. Thus the magisterial yamen has usually four courts; the first three, with the apartments attached to them, comprising the various offices required for administrative pur- poses; while the fourth, with its buildings, is sacred to the mandarin and his family. But it is impossible to treat, at the conclusion of a chapter, of a subject which would worthily fill a volume; nor can I do more than bestow this passing glance at the Valley of Tombs, which marks the resting-place of the last Chinese dynasty.
In conclusion, I venture to hope that — so far as my years of travel *and personal observation suffice — I have given the reader some insight into the condition of the inhabitants of the vast Chinese Empire. The picture at best is a sad one; and although a ray of sunshine may brighten it here and there, yet, after all, the darkness that broods over the land becomes but the more palpable under this straggling, fitful light. Poverty and ignorance we have among us in England ; but no poverty so wretched, no ignorance so intense as are found among the mil- lions of China.