It is, therefore, becoming patent to the most blind that this is going
to be something startling, something eclipsing any other anti-foreign
movement ever heard of, because never before have the users of foreign
imports and the mere friends of foreigners been labelled in a class
just below that of the foreigners themselves. And then as it became
dark to-day, a fresh wave of excitement broke over the city and
produced almost a panic. The main body of Tung Fu-hsiang's savage
Kansu braves--that is, his whole army--re-entered the capital and
rapidly encamped on the open places in front of the Temples of Heaven
and Agriculture in the outer ring of Peking. This settled it, I am
glad to say. At last all the Legations shivered, and urgent telegrams
were sent to the British admiral for reinforcements to be rushed up at
all costs.

But too late--too late; the Manchu servants who have friends among the
guards at the Palace gates have said this all the evening. For the
Chinese Colossus, lumbering and lazy, sluggish and ill-equipped, has
raised himself on his elbow, and with sheep-like and calculating eyes
is looking down on us--a pigmy-like collection of foreigners and their
guards--and soon will risk a kick--perhaps even will trample us
quickly to pieces. How bitterly everyone is regretting our false
confidence, and how our chiefs are being cursed!

VII

THE CITY OF PEKING AND ALL ITS GLORIES

11th June, 1900.

* * * * *

You do not know this Capital of Capitals, perhaps--that is, you do not
know it as you should if the scenes which may presently move across
the stage, now in shouting crowds of sword-armed men, now in pitiable
incidents of small account, are to be properly understood, and their
dramatic setting, stirring blood-thrilling, incongruous as they must
be and can only be. I feel that something will come--I even know it. I
have been talking vaguely about this and about that; have begun
preparing colours, as it were, in the usual careless fashion without
explanations or digressions--until you possibly wonder what it is all
about. For you have not yet seen the barbaric frame which will hedge
in the whole--the barbaric frame in all truth, since it is gradually
closing in on us on every side until, like some mediaeval torture-room,
we may have the very life crushed out of us by a cruel pressure. But
enough of fine phrases; while there is time let me write something.

Peking is a