sorder still reign supreme. Some
people estimate that half or even three quarters of the native
population have fled, and that this accounts for the curious silence
which now reigns, only to be broken by the noise of marauders or
marching troops. Yet I do not believe that so many of the population
have really fled; many people remain half hidden in quiet spots,
where, packed dozens and dozens in a single house, they tremulously
await the return to happier days. The Chinese, I sometimes think, of
all peoples of this earth must have their historic sense enormously
developed. Thousands of years of civil wars and countless endless
sieges have placed them in the dilemma of to-day more often than it is
possible to say. Only fifty years ago the Taipings made whole
provinces suffer the way Peking has now suffered.... Such things must
live in the blood of a people and never be quite forgotten....

You muse like this very often when you ride out and meet lumbering
military trains going back to Tientsin, laden with countless chests of
loot. What immense quantities of things have been taken! Every place
of importance, indeed, has been picked as clean as a bone. Now that
the road is well open, dozens of amateurs, too, from the ends of the
earth have been pouring in to buy up everything they can. The armies
have thus become mere bands of traders eternally selling or
exchanging, comparing or pricing, transporting or shipping. Every man
of them wishes to know whether there is a fortune in a collection of
old porcelain or merely a competence, and whether it is true that a
long robe of Amur River sables, when the furs are perfect and undyed,
fetch so many hundreds of pounds on the London market. There are
official military auctions going on everywhere, where huge quantities
of furs and silks and other things come under the hammer. Yet it is
noticed that the very best things always disappear before they can be
publicly sold. A phrase has been invented to meet the case. "_Cherchez
le general_," people say.

Even with these sales the stocks never seem to sink lower. There are
always fresh finds being made--seizures made officially by an officer
or two with a few files of men so that there may be some reasonable
excuse to offer to those who persist in remaining mulishly prudish.
These new finds are, of course, called treasures-trove. They are good
words. Looting has officially ceased; is, indeed, forbidden under the
most severe penalties.