-a car as comfortable as any Pullman or Wagner car in America or England. But, if so, avoid buying a railway ticket, for the Customs Department collects its money aboard its own car, and declines to recognise or allow for any money you have paid to the railway company. The railway, as yet, does not take you to Peking walls, but only delivers you on a sandy plain four miles short of the city. There you mount a pony, mule, or donkey, and ride into and through the city until you are delivered at the door of your friends (if you have any), or at the Hôtel de Peking.

Everything in the journey is easy if you procure at Shanghai or Tientsin a servant who speaks English and Pekingese Chinese. With that provision made, the 'globe-trotter' may get to Peking easily, even if he have with him a wife and daughter and an English maid. Without a servant you can also go quite easily, provided you are able to give orders without words.

Thus in five or six days from Shanghai you are in a city that is perhaps more talked of and less known than any other great capital.

I saw a great deal of Peking-more than I intended, save for certain reasons that enforced a longer stay. Temples and tombs, observatories and pagodas, one becomes wearied of. Always one is sickened by the same signs of decay.

You go to a

great structure of solid stone, white marble, and

curious bronze, beautifully designed, richly carved, a magnificent memory of the days when China was governed by men; but all this work, so rich and rare, is in decay, and often in filth. That is not for want of custodians. There are custodians in plenty. They are not unenergetic, either, when tips are in view; but to sweep, or clean, not to speak of repairing, is beyond their ideas. The public buildings of Peking are characteristic of the Chinese Empire. The whole is falling to decay for lack of public spirit.

The period of my visit, the latter half of August, is not the best period to visit Peking. I selected that time because Peking was to me only the startingpoint for my journey through Mongolia and Siberia; and for that journey it was necessary to start from Peking in August if one sought, when travelling, the autumnal coolness, yet not the winter cold.

But Peking in August is a much pleasanter place than I was led to suppose. During the time I stayed in Peking the shade temperature in my bedroom ranged from 70° Fahr. in the early morning to 85° in the afternoon. Having regard to the site and the plan of the Hôtel de Peking, I assume that in a spacious room in one of the legations the temperature would be rather less. The heat, further, is a dry heat, and is consequently much less fatiguing than the heat that the traveller will

experience when approaching Peking in summer, whether by way of Singapore and Shanghai or of Japan. But, in any case, the traveller who desires to visit Peking in the most comfortable conditions should rather choose September or October for his stay.

The dust of the streets of Peking, or, as it may be, the mud, is pretty bad, but, like most things, it is not so bad as one is told. As for odours—well, there are odours, but the wonder is that the odours are so few when one recollects that the city is practically without municipal regulations. Bombay, Calcutta, Singapore, are governed with all the machinery of English administration, and you smell them in the by-streets pretty much as you do Peking —that is to say, you smell a bad odour occasionally. But, as compared with the customary Chinese town -as compared with Canton, as compared with the native city at Shanghai-Peking is clean. Knock down the walls, pave the roads, remove the refuse, and you would make it a fine city.

It has much the same advantages that London has obtained from being a city of royal residence. The Forbidden City has its parallel in the open spaces that begin in Kensington Gardens and extend to Charing Cross by way of Hyde Park, St. James's and the Mall. Enclose these parks with a high wall, and you would make the West End of London topographically like the Manchu

district of Peking. Make the Forbidden City into public parks, and you convert the Manchu district of Peking into a new 'West End.' Somebody will do it some day. The question is whether that somebody will be Mongolian, Anglo-Saxon, or Slavonic.

Peking is not one of the large cities of the world. At one time it was supposed to be so. Travellers talked of two millions of people; then they spoke of a million; then the estimates were cut down to three-quarters of a million, or less. Personally, I do not believe Peking contains half a million. Apart from such great open spaces as those of the Forbidden City, most of the Manchu City is a city of small open spaces. There is no close building, and there is no high building. Each house has its courtyard. The great houses have many courtyards. At Li Hung Chang's house I went through half a dozen different courtyards before I arrived at His Excellency's reception-room. It was the same, in differing degree, with other Chinese-built houses that I visited; while, in riding through the streets with a guide, one ascertained that some huge stretch of blank wall enclosed but one man's house. He might, it is true, have many wives, concubines, and servants; but, after all, that could only mean a few hundred people within a space that might house many thousands.

Peking is not a populous city. It is a city designed

as the seat of a great government; a city designed with a liberal hand and a generous mind; a city that has been decaying ever since it was built, and yet a city that could easily be repaired. Of all the capital cities of the world, it is the most typical of the land that it professes to govern, and of the reason why it fails to govern. Within the walls of Peking, and without books, you can read the past and gauge the future of China. It turns on one point. Who is to repair Peking, and all that Peking typifies?

In journeying through and around Peking you may ride a pony, a mule, or a donkey; or you may sit in a springless two-wheeled covered cart. That vehicle I did not try save for a few minutes; but it is not uncomfortable, for although the cart has no springs there are springs to the seat. Chiefly one rides a mule or a pony. That also is the approved conveyance for outside excursions; such as to the hills where the legations have summer quarters, or to the famous Ming tombs. The latter is a three days' excursion of hard riding all the time; but no doubt it could be done with greater ease in a longer time. In all such near excursions the custom is that your baggage and food are carried in carts or on mules, and that you sleep at wayside inns that provide space and shelter only. It is, therefore, a great matter to choose a personal servant who can cook, and who will bustle things.