In Pekin, but apparently a long way yet from our destination, the Hôtel de Pékin; and judging from our small guide’s very erratic movements, we were not likely for some time to reach that friendly hostelry, which is kept by an enterprising Frenchman, M. ————. The disagreeable suspicion that our guide had lost his way became a certainty, when turning down a narrow by-lane, he brought us up all standing at the door of a filthy tea-house. It was not a pleasant predicament. Imagine a Central African suddenly turned loose in the streets of London, and you have our position——with this difference, that the African would have had the pull over us in the shape of a friendly policeman to take him to the station. Here, in this city of nearly two million inhabitants, it seemed unlikely enough that we should come across any of the English-speaking inhabitants, who number fifty to sixty at the most.
Threats of punishment and vengeance on the small boy were useless. He simply seated himself, and calling for a cup of tea, informed us we must find our way ourselves, he did not know it——at least that is what we inferred from his gestures, which were disrespectful in the extreme. With a lively recollection of our escape of the afternoon, we did not care to risk another disturbance, so, resigning ourselves to circumstances, dismounted and called for tea.
It was not a pleasant half-hour, for we were surrounded in less than five minutes by a crowd of the most insolent, dirtiest ruffians imaginable. We had evidently been brought to one of the very lowest quarters of the town, and were not sorry to have left our watches in the carts. With the exception of our revolvers and a few cash they would not have been much the richer for robbing us. I should be sorry to have much to do with the inhabitants of the Chinese capital. There is no more obliging and hospitable being than the Chinese peasant, no more insolent, arrogant thief than the lower order of Pekinese. The victory of the imperial troops over the French in Tonquin is, in a great measure, responsible for the insolence displayed by the inhabitants of Pekin towards Europeans. Insults are perpetrated almost daily, and in the open streets, for which there is no redress, and it is only necessary to go for a very short walk in the streets of the capital to see that the lesson taught the Celestials by the allied troops in 1860 has long since been forgotten.
We should probably have had to pass the night in this unsavoury den, had not a European passed and by the greatest luck caught sight of us through the narrow gateway. Our deliverer, Mr. P., an American missionary, himself escorted us through a labyrinth of crowded streets and squares to Legation Street. We should certainly never have found our way otherwise, for there were no outward and visible signs even here of European inhabitants, till just before reaching the hotel, we passed the French Embassy, and saw, through an open gateway, a spacious shady garden with smooth-shaven lawns, cedars, and fountains, while over the doorway, in large gold letters on a vermilion ground, were the words “Légation de France.” A couple of hundred yards further on we pulled up at the door of our caravanserai. Thanking and taking leave of our friend, we entered the building, and were not sorry to find ourselves in the cool, grey-tiled, flower-bordered courtyard of the hotel; where a whisky and soda with plenty of ice washed the dust out of our throats and refreshed us not a little after our long and somewhat eventful ride.
The baggage arrived an hour after, and after a bath and change we felt well disposed to do justice to the excellent dinner provided for us by M. ————, the repast being graced by the presence of his wife, pretty Madame ————, and her sister. Sitting out after dinner in the little moonlit courtyard redolent of heliotrope and mignonette, one might have fancied oneself hundreds of miles from the dusty, ill-smelling city, and its barbaric population. The smells did not, thank goodness, penetrate here; and for the first time since leaving Tientsin, we thoroughly enjoyed an after-dinner cigar, not a little relieved that the starting-point, at any rate, of our long land journey had been safely reached.
CHAPTER II.
PEKIN.
It was only in the year 1421 that Pekin became the capital of the Chinese Empire. It was up to that period merely the chief town of Northern China, as its name “Pe,” north, “Ching,” city, denotes; but when Nankin, the ancient capital, was abandoned, the seat of government was transferred to its present situation. A worse site for a capital, both commercially and socially, can scarcely be imagined, for although connected by canal with the Peiho river, and thus in summer with the rest of the civilized world, the ice in winter entirely suspends water communication. It is, therefore, for five months of the year, practically a prison for the fifty or sixty Europeans located within its grass-grown walls, for few are rash enough to attempt a journey overland to Chefoo or Shanghai.
There is little or no foreign trade with Pekin, and with one exception no European merchants live there. The embassies of various nations, English and American missions, and professors connected with the college form the majority of the European population. A good deal of difference of opinion exists as to the native population of the capital. Some say it is a million and a half, others not more than nine hundred thousand. In the opinion of Professor P————, who has resided for over twenty years in the place, and is well up in Chinese matters, it is considerably over a million, of whom two-thirds inhabit the Tartar city. The remainder are Chinese, who yearly increase, while their Tartar neighbours are diminishing in number.
In shape Pekin may be roughly described as a square within an oblong, the former standing for the Tartar city, the latter for the Chinese. The outer walls, which are about sixty feet high and of immense thickness, stand about a hundred and fifty yards from the city itself, the space between being occupied by barren sandy waste, along which in the season hundreds of caravans may be seen daily wending their way to or from the Mongolian Desert and Manchuria. Inside this, again, are two smaller walls, also, however, of considerable height, enclosing the imperial and forbidden cities, that enclosing the latter being surmounted with bright yellow tiles, the imperial colour, which none but the Emperor or Queen Regent are permitted to make use of. A Roman Catholic church was built not far from the walls of the Imperial Palace two or three years since, and, in ignorance presumably, the European architect was commencing to roof it over with tiles of the sacred colour, when luckily warned of the risk he was running by one of the European residents; not, however, before it had come to the Emperor’s ears, and since then the poor priests connected with the building are given no peace. The two high western towers which flank the building are visited night and day by a mandarin, to see that no steps have been built up them by the foreign devils, whence they may survey the palaces and gardens of the imperial city. Latterly, to make assurance doubly sure, the walls of the latter have been raised to the height of the church towers at the point where the latter face them.