more to say for the next ten or twelve hours, during which the steamer is twisting and turning incessantly, making her way through bend after bend of the weary continuity of mud-banks which constitutes the unbroken landscape. An occasional hamlet, with plenty of naked, mud-colored children running about; a little green vegetation some distance back from the river; a flag or two marking a military station every few miles; and a general air of dreariness over every thing;this is about the appearance of the Pei-ho. At Tien-tsin we find ourselves restored to a sense of civilization by the appearance of the Foreign Settlement, extending, with its handsome Bund, along the southern bank of the river, nearly up to the point of its intersection with the Grand Canal. But here we must part with our enjoyable accommodations, and betake ourselves to native conveyances, either a four-days' drag against the stream up the continuation of the river as far as ThungChow (about eighteen miles from Peking), or else an overland trip in wagons, or carts, by which about half the distance is saved. "Carts, if you please," we say to our hospitable friend, who has undertaken to forward us and our views. "Then I'm afraid you'll have to wait a day or two; for there is a High Mandarin on his way to the capital, and all the carters have run off to the neighboring villages, and are hiding themselves and their animals, for fear of being pressed into the Imperial service at an extremely low rate, according to custom." Couldn't "take it in" for some time; but a delay of two days impressed upon our minds the fact that it was even so; and it was with almost a childish pleasure that we heard, in the evening of the second day, that there were two cartmen, with their vehicles, lying perdu in some neighboring hovel, who would appear in a magical and dramatic manner at early dawn next morning, and take charge of us and our baggage. "Now we have really got a start!" was our delighted thought. But oh, what kind of a start was it, when we came to see and feel the conveyances themselves! A framework-a heavy framework-set upon wheels of the nature of gun-carriages; one pretty stout mule set in between the most rigid and clumsy of shafts, and another lighter mule hitched on to the axle, underneath; trunks, boxes, and bedding half filling up the carrying capacity of the cart; and we ourselves-that is, each one in his own conveyance-stowed away as best he could in the space of a cubic four feet by five, or thereabouts, given these elements; and then let the tout ensemble be set in motion over roads that owe nothing to art, and almost less to nature; let the sun pour down scorchingly, and a sand-storm pass over you searchingly, while you endure the jolts and jerks and plunges of your moving prison; intensify all this as much as you can, and still the impression will fall far short of the reality, even though my reader should be highly sympathetic and imaginative. It cannot be conceived; it must be experienced, if one would have a true idea of its most vexatious detestableness; for one is provoked almost to exasperation at the thought that a people claiming to be civilized-nay, holding their heads very high on that subject—that they should permit the chief approach to their capital to be such a disgrace and a disgust; that they should content themselves with vehicles so utterly below any decent average of conveyance and that they should presume to hold the rulership over hundreds of millions of people, and yet not have the first inkling of that great road-making idea which characterizes the Romans of old and all ruling nations ever since. Such thoughts lasted us through the city of Tien-tsin; and, while working our way out of the western suburbs, we were surprised to find ourselves accompanied, after a straggling fashion, by a great variety of troops, Chinese soldiers of various types: first a squad of matchlock men, picking their way individually, as best they could, from side to side of the filthy, narrow, unpaved gined. Nevertheless, he must be a man streets; then some archers gaudily of parts, for he has carried through his dressed, carrying an abundance of military operations to a successful conflags; then the jingall-bearers-a sort clusion. of flying artillery, minus the horses and gun-carriages; then some hard-looking cavalry; and, finally, some of the "disciplined troops "—that is, foreign-drilled and foreign-officered infantry, carrying muskets with percussion-locks. These all bore a multiplicity of flags of various shapes and colors, giving a bright and gaudy appearance to the whole line of street through which they straggled. It was not without some difficulty, and the risk of angry altercation, that we extricated ourselves from the cortége, and at last got clear of city, suburbs, soldiers, and molestation. Once fairly on the road, we progressed -not pleasantly, it is true, but forwardly in the main. That is, when we came to a part of the road which a recent rain had flooded effectually, our cartmen turned off, right or left as the case might be, making a détour of a mile or two, and getting back, perhaps, at a point where mules and cart were halfsubmerged, but not past pulling through -the free mule (to call him so) being mounted on a bank on one side, dragging away at our axle, while the shaftmule (poor fellow !) had to do the best he could steadying himself and us, and floundering about as circumstances might require. This kind of thing, repeated to weariness, was going on outside, while bumps and bruises were being multiplied upon our uneasy persons within the cart; our only relief being an occasional walk through the dryer parts, or a half-hour's ride upon one of the shafts, which was the only tolerable sitting-place about the whole machine. I recommend it accordingly. Towards evening, as we were nearing our halting-place, who should pass us, sitting in a good-sized sedan-chair carried by four men, but the great man, Le Hoong Chung himself. His cortége was somewhere else, far away behind, probably; and he sat there, a small, driedup old man, with large spectacles, looking as little like a hero as can be ima Early in the evening a strong tendency to halt for the night exhibited itself in one of our cartmen, malgré the arguments and directions of our head traveller, who knew well the road and its peculiarities. His plan was to push on to a halting-village somewhat more than half-way, so as to leave us a shorter day's work at the end, enabling us to enter Peking early next evening. All very well; plan excellent, and would have worked admirably, if we could only have got the consent of our subordinates to carrying it out. But, alas ! Scotchman as our leader was, and determined as such "nationals" usually are, a native cart-driver on his own ground is too much for "the best-laid schemes o' mice and men;" and the countryman of Burns, with your humble correspondent, experienced the alternative "grief and pain," missing the "promised joy." No; our excellent driver had his own preferential stopping-place, where his family, or some distant relatives, resided; and this favored spot was reached all on a sudden, as we found to our surprise, by the quicker pace of the mules, who performed an abrupt turning off the main street of a village, jerked us through a narrow gateway, and came to a violent stand-still in the midst of a quadrangle paved with mud-puddles, and surrounded by low ranges of hovels. If I were writing after the usual manner of oldtime Oriental travellers, I should call this a "khan," or a 66 caravanserai," or some other such untranslated term of imposition; but, as I have the Macedonian habit of calling a spade "a spade,” I must speak of this place as the filthy court-yard of a miserable inn. It was of no use for the cartman to assure us that it was kept by a Mohammedanthese religionists (quite numerous about here) having the credit of being better inn-keepers than their polytheistic Chinese neighbors. It was equally of little use, on our side, to remonstrate against being thus prematurely dumped down where we didn't want to stop. The deed was done; the mules were unharnessed, and one of our cartmen was nonapparet, while we were left at leisure and at liberty to make ourselves at home as best we might. A survey of the hut, or lodging-room, nearest to where our carts were moored, satisfied our leader that it was as good as any other (save the mark !); and, in a moment of mistaken tidiness, his housecleaning instincts got the better of him, and he ordered the place to be swept and dusted! 66 The reluctance of the serving-man was natural, for the job was a troublesome one; and would that our Caledonian chief had "given in" on this point also. But, alas! he was resolute -as men are tempted to be who have been foiled at one point, and think they can have their own way in another. He persisted, therefore, and the servitor complied, and commenced. Two sweeps of the broom and a few dashes of the birds'-wing which served for a duster, were enough for me! Guano is good -at least, I suppose it is (for manure); but when the fine dust of a permanent stable-yard has accumulated for weeks on the floor, and on all the ledges of an apartment" such as was our destined sleeping-room, and when these finelypowdered deposits are violently disturbed by a servant-inan in a bad temper, then I can seriously assure all inexperienced parties the consequences are pungent, inimitable, intolerable, and difficult to be allayed. Yet in this very atmosphere must we of necessity eat our supper; for the trunk and bedding had been brought in, and could not be left unguarded; especially as, among other things, there was an illconcealed box of specie to be taken care of. Supper had been ordered: rice, stewed meat- - beef or mutton (doubtful which)-flour-cakes, hot wine, sweetmeats, and tea; which last was of our own providing, it not being very commonly used here. This part of the pilgrimage was not so objectionable, and we found the res taurant arrangements all along the road of an appetite-sufficing nature, always supposing the appetite to be strong. This is apt to be the case, for the air was fine, and the general effect of the climate enlivening, after the exhaustive atmosphere of a Shanghai August. It was now about the middle of September, 1868. Just ten years before, at the time when the Ta-koo forts were taken and the treaties of Tien-tsin negotiated, we had been of the number of those who penetrated so far up the Pei-ho as was then attained; and now, after the interval of a decade, we were to learn what was that wonderful capital, an entrance into which had been so pertinaciously opposed for so many centuries. With this thought, we bestirred ourselves early in the morning, after having passed a rather uneasy night, partly owing to that plaguy box of specie, which we had, at the last moment, been requested to take up to “a friend,” and partly by reason of the sleeping-place, which was the customary mass of brickwork, built divan-fashion, and warmed (when the cold weather requires) by a fire at one end, the chimney of which winds its way through the whole structure. Happily for us, we did not need to run the risk of a scorching such as some travellers here have experienced, for our "lodging was on the cold ". stove; nevertheless, it was enlivened! You understand, my sun-burnt reader, whose fez shows that you have travelled-probably in Egypt; you understand. I see it by the smile of recognition which passes over your face, and the sympathetic wriggle of the shoulders, which indicates-fleas. Ah, yes; we were enlivened, indeed; and for many days afterwards were there to be seen sudden clutchings at our garments, or hasty pulling off of shoes to search for the little dark-brown acrobat, which was seen for an instant among the threads of our out-turned sock, and then performed the famous California "act" of vamos el rancho. Well, we started anew, fleas and all the carts, cartmen, and mules as dirty as betore, and as persistent in going on, le after le, in a fatalistic sort of way, bringing us every hour nearer and nearer to the end of our journeyings, but not relieving our weariness by any "characteristics," such as muleteers, gondoliers, "and such" are usually found to possess for the beguilement of travellers and the filling of their notebooks. Not a bit of it: all plain, stolid trudging, without much noise or whip ping of the mules, but with ample compensation in the jolts and bumps, which admitted neither of avoidance or mitigation. And-would you believe it?-those fellows performed upon us the very same trick this night that they had the previous one-the same stopping short; the same preferentially-detestable lodging; the same fleas, only more and worse; the same sudden disappearance of the cartmen, when we longed to have them up for an objurgation! Complaint was useless, and further progress impossible; so out came the baggage again-trunks, bedding, and that uneasy box of specie, not to mention a few other boxes which friends had asked us "just to take along." Oh, save me from my friends, when in transit between two colonies of them! But seriously, for a moment. The need and the justification of such requests, to make a baggage-master of yourself when passing between Tientsin and Peking, is found in the fact that there is really no decently-reliable way of getting things forwarded to this capital and court of the Mammoth Empire of the world. There is no road that deserves the name; no watercommunication that is not incessantly liable to be reduced to a few inches of depth; no public post for the trustworthy conveyance of letters; no available banking-system, by which remit tances can be made between distant places. What remains, then, but such expedients as that of carrying with you all you may want for your own use, and obliging friends (who have been overwhelmingly obliging to you), by taking charge, for them, of what cannot but make your own travelling extra-slow and doubly dangerous. I consider it quite remarkable that we got through safely with that box of specie. And this is the country which is so highly civilized that it can't bear the thought of a railroad, and shudders at a telegraph-wire ! 1 Well, the second night passed, and it was Saturday night; so that we had the extra discomfort of arriving at the city, after a day-dawn start, at about eight o'clock, when the huge walls of the city-some sixty feet high-were reached, and we passed through the gateways in company with the living tide of travellers, hucksters, barrowmen, and burden-bearers, which throng the thoroughfare. No passport was demanded, though we were provided therewith a piece of negligence, probably, on the part of the guard at the gates. A few words of direction were given to my cartman, and I was left at his discretion, to be delivered safe (if not sound) at the United States Legation; and it took nearly an hour of travel, first through the Chinese city, and then through part of the inner or Tartar enclosure, to reach that destination. Now, this hour was harder to endure than any of the previous tossings and jerkings. The stones-buge squared blocks, once well and evenly laid--were displaced in every imaginable way; one end sunk down and the other end sticking up; some slanting this way and others that; some with mud-holes between them enough to catch and break off a mule's leg, after the manner of the old mule-road between Aspinwall and Panama; others piled up so that it was a feat to "straddle" them, as wagon-drivers in the West learn to do with the primeval stumps that are left in a new-cleared road. A noble breadth of street, and the remains of splendidly-constructed stone archings of enormous width; enclosures of many acres in extent, with their surrounding walls tumbling down, their gateways dilapidated, and the forest-like domains within unkept and uncultivated-all these things betoken the vastness of the plan on which the city was laid out, and the immense labor bestowed upon it at the beginning; while the whole air of dreary, dingy grandeur, unoccupied expanse of ground, and lazy disregard both of utility and good looks, convinces one of the decadence of all dynastic things. The streets, saved from being one outspread muddy swamp only by having the earth thrown up in the middle, to make a sort of undulating cosseway; the pretentious, once gaudy, now faded screens set up before each shop, to give it an appearance of height; the canals passing through some of the chief thoroughfares filled up with ooze, so that not even a shallow punt could float there; the vehicles so rude, so inconvenient, so comfortless, so entirely below par in every particular-all this, and a thousand details of like character, make one exclaim with wonder at the stand-still condition which all things have fallen into. Nay, "standstill" is too good a word for it; retrograde is the truer description; and the heavy charge that lies against the Tartar Tsing dynasty, as an organization of rulers, is, that they have not even kept up the national works their predecessors, the Chinese Mings, had constructed. Was it because they are Tartars?-nomads, sheep-pasturing dwellers in tents, not caring for settled homes and carriage-roads? Or are they so intent on the great work of tax-collecting and office-seeking, that they have no time or thought or energy to bestow upon the public good, for which the taxes are laid and the offices held? In fiscal exaction and bureau management they greatly excel; but when it comes to administering justice, or restraining the overflow of a swollen river, or keeping a treaty, or developing the resources of the country, or maintaining roads, or checking mob-law in their cities, these are attributes of government which seem to be in abeyance at the present time. But here we are at the United States Legation. Star-spangled banner; friends just at breakfast; happy greetings; pause in our pilgrimage to Peking. So "Must we go out in those infamous carts again? Is there no alternative ? " "Yes; you can go on horseback." one of our resident friends offers his escort, and we find it far easier to escape mud-gulches, broken pavements, and "entangling alliances" with other vehicles, than when boxed up in a cart. But what shall we see? The Imperial Palace, the "Prohibited City," of course; and we do see the outside, though a gateway, that guards a convenient thoroughfare free to all Chinese, is hurriedly closed as we foreigners approach. The grand Lamasery is also closed against us-reasons given, that a foreigner had rudely ridden his pony into a private walk only a short time previously. Temple of Heaven (so called) difficult of access for another reason: a rich foreign traveller had been so lavish of money to the doorkeepers, that they wanted "more dollars" at every successive enclosure; and there were about a dozen of them! Temple of Confucius impressive, from the absence of all idols, and the substitution of simple tablets with nothing but the names of himself and his chief disciples. Also the whole of the classic books engraved on a forest of stone slabs, set upright in regular rows about three feet from each other, all over the halls. The various Ya-mens (that is, public offices) are poor, dingy-looking establishments; that of the famous Han-lin, quite dilapidated. The bestkept grounds we met with were those connected with the long ranges of buildings where the Emperor's carriages were stowed away under lock and key, to be brought out for use on some such great occasion as a royal visit to Tartary. Few visits, however, does the present boy-Emperor make, the "Secluded Palace" being his prison-house. They say that, childlike, he whimpers sometimes because he is not taken to the Summer Palace-the famous Yuen-mingyuen, which was made a ruin, in 1860, |