n immense rectangular wall, some sixty feet in height,
with a width of twenty feet at the top and forty feet at the base, and
pierced at regular intervals by picturesque and towering gateways,
between which wide boulevards traverse the city from end to end and
from side to side, but which, instead of being paved and lighted, are
but lanes of filth, ankle deep in dust during dry weather, to be
quickly changed by rain into rivers of black mud, continuously churned
up by the wheels of springless carts, and spattered far and wide by
the plunging feet of straining quadrupeds.

On either side of, and frequently several feet below, these highways
are mud paths, along which pedestrians wend a varied way, avoiding
cesspools, stepping over transverse timbers or circumventing
squatters' huts, showered on the while by splashings from the highroad
or blinded by clouds of refuse-laden dust.

The only attempt at lighting is by means of lanterns, which, with
heavy wooden frames covered with paper instead of glass and placed at
intervals of perhaps a quarter of a mile, throw out rays to the
extent of one candle-power each.

From the streets very few buildings of any pretensions can be
discerned, while from the dominating eminence of the city wall a sea
of roofs monotonous in equality of height and greyness of colour meets
the eye, which sameness is mostly due to the facts that but few upper
storeys exist, and that the residences of the wealthy, besides being
screened by high outer walls, are so blended with shops and hovels
that it is difficult to discriminate them.

In the heart of Peking, and surrounded by a twenty-foot wall coped
with tiles glazed yellow and green, is the forbidden city, where the
imperial palaces are grouped and from which Europeans were until
recently jealously excluded.

The city walls; a few temples in varying stages of magnificence,
tawdriness and decay; the remains of sewers which, built of solid
blocks of stone and large enough to admit a donkey, show that formerly
a scheme of drainage and sanitation existed although to-day there is
nothing of the kind; an insignificant canal and a hill rumoured to be
made of coal heaped there as a supply in case of siege; and one has
seen the architectural wonders of the capital.

"Legation Quarter" prior to the Boxer troubles was but an indefinite
area of the city in which the legations "happened" from time to time
amongst a squalid entourage of native buildings, and