The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1894-11-28
MIGHTY PEKIN.
ALL ABOUT ITS QUEER SIGHTS
AND STRANGE PEOPLE.
Capital of One-third Of the World
Walls Of Pekin and Three DIFF
ferent Cities Enclosed
Its Great Markets.

TEKIN, writes Frank q. Car
- penter in the Washington
Star, is perhaps one of the
least known cities of the
world. have paid two visits to it,
and I spent month in it six years
ago. During the present spring l
prowled about its streets for days and
devoted myself to making a study of
the town and it's people. It is an i'm
mense city. 1t contains about fifteen
hundred thousand, but these are scat
tered over an area of twenty-five
square miles, and the people as a rule
live IN one-story houses. The city is
surrounded by walls which were built
hundreds of years ago, and which
must have cost many millions of dol
lars. These walls are in good condi-
tion with the exception of one or two
places WHARF the foods of last winter
undermined them and carried part
of their facings away. It is hard to
give an American an idea of one OF
these walled cities of China. The
walls of Pekin are sixty feet thick at
the bottom. They would fill the av'
erage country road or city street, and
they are as tall as four-story house.
They are 30 wide at the top that you
could run three railroad trains side by
side around them, and they are 30 solid
that the cars would move more
smoothly over these tracks than they
do on the trunk lines between New
York and Chicago. These walls are
faced inside and out with bricks, each
as big as a four.dollar Bible, and the
space between is filed with earth and
stones so rammed down that the ages
have made the whole one solid mass.
They are built, in fact, much like the
great wall of China. and the bricks of
the two are almost exactly the same.
I have before me brick which I
brought from the great wall. 1t
weighs about twenty pounds, or as
much as two-year-old baby. 1t is
blue gray in color, and it is covered
with patches of white lime mortar just
like those that I saw in the broken
places of the walls of Pekin.
In approaching Pekin, long before
you get to the city, you see the i'm
mense towers which stand on the top
of this wall over the gates which enter
the city. These towers are as tall AS
q big New York fat. They rise nine
stories above the wall, and they have
roofs of blue tiles. They were used
in the past as watch-towers, and they
have many port holes for cannon.
There are thirteen gates which lead
into the city, and the towers and the
walls near these are plastered over
with proclamations and bills much
like theatre billboard. The gates
of Pekin are merely holes through
this wall, and they are about as wide
as the ordinary street and perhaps
twenty feet high. They are lined
with stone and are beautifully arched.
They are closed at night with great
doors sheathed with iron, and they
are paved with heavy slabs of stone.
The walls of Pekin are twenty-seven
miles long, and the area which they
enclose is irregular in shape, and it
consists OF two big parallelograms.
The one at the north is the real capi-
tai of China, for it contains the Tar
tar city, the great Government de-
partments, the foreign legations and
the Imperial city, in which, surround
ed by from five to ten thousand
eunuche, the Emperor lives. The
lower parallelogram joins the Tartar
city. It has half a dozen temples, in.
Guiding the Temple of Heaven, which
was burned down not long ago, and
which now is being rebuilt of Oregon
pine.
The Chinese city is where all the
mercantile business of this great
capital is done. 1t is cut up into
narrow streets, and it is filed with all
sorts of stores. 1t has markets of all