ood & Underwood_

CARAVAN OUTSIDE THE TARTAR WALL]

There is unfailing charm and interest in the view over Peking from the
top of the wall. Chinese cities are generally attractive, looked down
upon from above, because of the many trees, but here the wealth of
foliage and blaze of colour are almost bewildering; the graceful
outlines of pagoda and temple, the saucy tilt of the roofs, yellow and
green, imperial and princely, rising above stretches of soft brown
walls, the homes of the people, everything framed in masses of living
green; and stretching around it all, like a huge protecting arm, the
great grey wall. You sigh with satisfaction; nowhere is there a jarring
note; and then--you turn your eyes down to the grounds and buildings of
the American Legation at your feet, clean, comfortable, uncompromising,
and alien. Near you paces to and fro a soldier, gun on shoulder, his
trim figure set off by his well-fitting khaki clothes, unmistakably
American, unmistakably foreign, guarding this strip of Peking's great
wall, where neither Manchu nor Chinese may set foot. And then your gaze
travels along the wall, to where, dimly outlined against the horizon,
you discern the empty frames of the wonderful astronomical instruments
that were once the glory of Peking, now adorning a Berlin museum, set up
for the German holiday-makers to gape at. After all, there are
discordant notes in Peking.

Down in the streets there is plenty of life and variety. Mongol and
Manchu and Chinese jostle each other in the dust or mud of the broad
highways. The swift rickshaws thread their way through the throng with
amazing dexterity. Here the escort of a great official clatters by, with
jingling swords and flutter of tassels, there a long train of camels
fresh from the desert blocks the road. The trim European victoria, in
which sits the fair wife of a Western diplomat, fresh as a flower in her
summer finery, halts side by side with the heavy Peking cart, its curved
matting top framing the gay dress and gayer faces of some Manchu women.
And the kaleidoscopic scene moves against a background of shops and
houses gay with paint and gilding. The life, the colour, the noise are
bewildering; your head begins to swim. And then you look away from it
all to the great wall. There it stands, massive, aloof, untouched by the
petty life at its foot. And you think of all it has looked upon; what
tales of men and their doings it could tell. And you ask the first