But our greatest disappointment of all is that we must give up a five days' expedition to the Great Wall if we would take the French mail from Shanghai. "Fancy going to Peking and not seeing the Wall!" I can hear someone exclaim. Well, we shall not be all unique in this, for three-fourths of the hundred foreigners who live in Peking have never been, nor ever intend to go. An artificial interest, all out of proportion to the reality, is created by its great antiquity. Finished in 204. B.C. (for it took ten years in building) for 1500 miles this great wall, which was intended to keep out all the enemies of China, runs up and down the northern face of the country, in one place over a peak of 5225 feet high. It is constructed of earth and stones. It has been truly said: "that looking over the surface of our globe, it is the only artificial structure that would arrest the gaze."
The grapes are sour. For after all, the visitors who go do not see the real Great Wall, but only a spur of more modern date. Also the walls of Peking are considerably higher and more imposing.
As is only fit and proper, for they are the most interesting feature of the city, we make our farewell to Peking from those grand Walls.
CHAPTER XI.
SHANGHAI AND HONG-KONG.
We left Peking at dawn. Through the silent streets of the Tartar City we drove, passing for the last time through the Gate of Sublime Learning on to the sandy waste outside, jolting along under the great Walls, with the sun rising to meet us.
We are returning to Tungchau by the Canal, and so saving the penalties of the road and the dust, but owing to the numerous locks, we have to transship no less than five times from one boat to another. This waterway is in connection with the great Imperial canal, another, like the Great Wall, of those time-enduring monuments of the industry of a great people—and serves to transport the tribute of rice from the south to Peking. The locks are very picturesque, being built of yellow blocks of stone, over which the running water forms a waterfall overshadowed by trees. It is a quaint slow mode of travelling, gently rippling along over the mirror surface of the water, past great rustling beds of pampas grass twelve feet high, opposite one of which some Chinese sportsmen, with their matchlocks and lighted fuses, are crouched ready to fire at the wild ducks that abound in these watery marshes. Amongst the groves of trees, which look golden in their autumn foliage against a clear blue sky, we see many memorial peilaus, and those other monuments of stone pyramids springing from the back of a huge tortoise. The air is still and clear as early autumn, and the sounds from the mud villages we pass, are borne clearly to us. The walls of Peking, with their crenellated gateways, are just fading away into the blue haze.
Five hours of tedious progress makes our eyes glad to see the beautiful carved bridge of Palikiao, where the combat in 1860 took place, and the damage then done to the bridge has never been repaired. In a few minutes more the pagoda of Tungchau looms up, and the canal rapidly narrows.
We reach Tungchau in a veritable dust-storm, that blows the loose sand by the banks into spiral columns and pillars, and embark once more on the house-boat. It seems quite like coming home. Then we begin the Peiho's weary succession of winding reaches, with the endless continuation of mud banks and yellow water.