rose above the trees.

It was known to the British troops in Pekin as the Temple of the Sun; whether the name is correct or not I cannot say.

Passing the cavalry camp we came to a flight of steps, which led up to a terrace. On ascending this we found a huge gateway to the left. We passed through, and then, little susceptible as we were to artistic emotions, we stopped and gazed in silent admiration as the full beauty of the building stood revealed. The temple, circular in shape, stands on a slight eminence, surrounded by tiers of white marble balustrades. Its triple roof, bright with gleaming blue tiles and golden knob, blazed in the sun, the spaces between the roofs filled with gay designs in brilliant colours. The walls were of carved stone open-work with many doors. doors. It It rose, a dream of beauty and grace, against a dark green background of leafy trees, the loveliest building in Pekin. Within, all was bare. An empty altar, a painted tablet, a few broken gilt stools were all that pillaging hands had spared. The massive bronze urns which stood outside, too heavy to be carried away, had lost their handles, wrenched off for the mere value of the metal. Quitting the temple and passing through a door in a low wall, we came to a broad open space, in which stood a curious con

* Lord Curzon, in his interesting book, Problems of the Far East, refers to this building as "The Temple of Heaven" and calls what I have described as "The Centre of the Universe" "The Altar of Heaven." He is more likely to be correct than the officers of the armies of occupation, but I give the names which they used.

struction which bears the proud title of "Centre of the Universe." Three circles of white marble balustrades, one within the other, rose up to a paved platform, round which were large urns. Here once a year the Emperor comes in state to offer sacrifice to the manes of his ancestors. Close by was the Temple of the Moon, in design similar to that of the Sun, but much smaller and with only a single roof.

This exhausted the sights of the Temple of Heaven. We returned through the park to the railway station, where we procured rickshas to take us to the hotel. Strong, active coolies whirled us along over the wide, flagged road that runs through the Chinese town. We passed crowds of Celestials trudging on in the awful dust, springless Pekin carts drawn by sturdy little ponies, an occasional Bengal Lancer or German Mounted Infantryman, through streets of mean shops, the fronts hung with gaudy sign-boards, until we reached the wall of the Tartar city. Before us stood the Chien Mên Gate, the brick tower above it roofless and shattered by shells, the heavy iron-studded door swung back. We rumbled through the long, tunnel-like entrance, between rows of low, one-story houses, and soon reached the famous Legation Street, the quarter in which lie the residences of the Foreign Ministers and the other Europeans in Pekin. We passed along a wide road in good repair, by gateways at which stood Japanese, French, and German sentries,

by the shattered ruins of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. All around the Legations lay acres of wrecked Chinese houses, torn by shells and blackened by fire-a grim memento of the outrage that had roused the civilised world to arms. At length we reached a broad street leading from the Ha-ta-man Gate, turned to the left down it, and drew up before a small entrance in a line of low, one-story houses. Above it was a board bearing the inscription, "Hôtel du Nord." Jumping from our rickshas, we paid off the perspiring coolies, and, walking across a small courtyard, were met by the proprietor and shown to our quarters. The hotel, which had been opened shortly after the relief of the Legations, consisted of a number of squalid Chinese houses, which had been cleverly converted into comfortable dining, sitting, and bedrooms. An excellent cuisine made it a popular resort for the officers of the Allies in Pekin, and we found ourselves as well catered for as we could have done in many more pretentious hostels in civilised lands.

A short description of the chief city of China may not be out of place; though recent events have served to draw it from the obscurity that enshrouded it so long. It is singular among the capitals of the world for the regularity of its outline, owing to the stupendous walls which confine it. These famous battlements are twenty-five miles in total circumference, and the long lines, studded with

lofty towers and giant buttresses, present an imposing spectacle from the exterior.

Pekin is divided into two separate and distinct cities, the Tartar and the Chinese. The latter, adjoining the southern wall of the former, is in shape a parallelogram, its longer sides running east and west. It grew as an excrescence to the capital of the victorious Manchus, and was in ancient times inhabited by the conquered Chinese as the Tartar City was by the superior race, though now this line of demarcation is lost in the practical merging of the two nationalities as regards the lower orders. The wall of the Chinese city is thirty feet high and twenty feet thick.

The Tartar city, in shape also a parallelogram, with the longer sides north and south, is surrounded by a much more imposing wall, which if vigorously defended would prove a truly formidable obstacle to any army unprovided with a powerful siege train. It is forty feet high, fifty feet broad at the top, and sixty-four feet thick at the base, and consists of two masonry walls, made of enormous bricks as solid as stone, that on the external face being twelve feet thick, the interior one eight feet, the space between them filled with clay, rammed in layers of from six to nine inches.* A practicable breach might be effected by the concentrated fire of heavy siege guns, for shells

* These dimensions were given me by Lieutenant Pearson, R.E., who had to tunnel the wall to allow the passage of a railway line.