eir pocket. Others argue that expeditions must really be launched
against a number of cities in Northern China, where hideous atrocities
have been committed, and where missionaries and converts were
butchered in countless numbers during the Boxer reign. Until these
expeditions have marched and had their revenge, there can be no
treating. There must be more killing, more blood. That is what people
say.

The fleeing Court has reached Taiyuanfu, it is reliably reported. This
is three hundred miles away, but the Court does not yet feel safe; it
is going farther west, straight on to Hsianfu, the capital of Shensi
province, which is seven hundred miles away. That is a big gulf to
bridge; yet if there is any advance of European corps in that
direction, already Chinese say that the Empress will flee into the
terribly distant Kansu province--perhaps to Langchou, which is another
four hundred miles inland; perhaps even to Kanchau or Suchau, which
are five hundred miles nearer Central Asia. These cities, lying at
the very southwestern extremity of the Great Wall of China, look out
over the vast steppes of Mongolia, where there are nothing but Mongols
belonging to many hordes, who live in the saddle and drive their
flocks of sheep and their herds of ponies in front of them, forever
moving. It is nearly two thousand miles in all; no European armies
could ever follow, not in five years. They would slowly melt away on
that long, interminable road. With such a line of retreat open the
Court is absolutely safe, and knows it. It can act as it pleases.

Prince Ching is so miserably poor, they say, and has so little of the
things he most needs, that he has been forced to borrow looted _sycee_
from corps commanders and to give orders on the Southern Treaty ports
in payment. It is an extraordinary situation.

A number of little expeditions have already been pushed out forty,
fifty and even sixty miles into the country, feeling for any remnants
of the Chinese armies which may remain. I went with one of these
_faute-de mieux_, as Peking has become so gloomy, and there is so
little to do that it fills one with an immense nostalgia to remain and
continually to contemplate the ruins and devastation, from which there
can be no escape.

Never shall I regret that little expedition into the rude hills and
mountains, where climbs in wonderful manner the Great Wall of China.
It was divine. There was a sense of freedom and of openness which no
one