CH’IEN MEN GATE
Baron von Ketteler, the German Minister, considered some Boxer who walked down Legation Street was impertinent to him, and chased him up the street as far as the Russian Bank, where he finally captured him. He was beating him over the head with his walking-stick even before the fellow stopped, and the crowd that collected was enormous. Captain Myers, Captain Strouts of the English, and Baron von Rahden, of the Russian guard, seized this opportunity to make a kind of rush down and up Legation Street, placing the Maxim-gun ready to use if necessary, and in this way completely cleared it of Chinese from the Dutch Legation down to the Italian. They had wanted to take this step for some time, deeming it has now become necessary to take real measures for our defence. They were glad of this excuse.
June 16.
In the afternoon yesterday we were horrified at the number of big fires that broke out in so many different parts of the Tartar city, and when we saw that the Ch’ien Men Gate was blazing, and all the houses around in the same condition, we felt we were in great danger. If this got a hold, it would burn up the Legation district of Peking very quickly. There are two parts of the city—the northern Manchu city, containing the Imperial palaces and garrison, also the foreign Legations; and the southern or Chinese city, containing the trading population, theatres, and markets. Both parts are joined in the form of the letter T, the leg or largest part being the Manchu city on the north, with walls 60 feet high, 40 feet wide at the top, loop-holed parapets 3 feet high at the side, and square bastions 100 yards apart on the outside face. At wide intervals along the inside face are pairs of inclined roads, 8 feet wide, for mounting the wall. The total length of this rectangular wall on the four sides of the Manchu city is about twelve miles. Joined to this great wall on the south is the much lower and weaker wall of the Chinese or southern city. All nationalities sent men, even these traitorous Pekingese, to aid us in extinguishing the fire. The Imperial fire-brigade arrived with great pomp, and could have furnished charming costumes for some “extravaganza” in their get-up. They had no idea how to put a fire out, but fortunately they had some hose, which, when used in the telling places, proved most efficacious.
Our men fought this terrible fire side by side with the Chinese, and this goes to show how a common danger levels most things, even active hostilities. The Cossacks worked exceptionally well. This fire had been started by the rioters and thieves in the rich bazaar district of the city, under cover of which they hoped to get much rich booty. The wind being high, the flames gained great headway, and the tremendous Ch’ien Men Gate was soon ablaze. By eight o’clock the fire was somewhat controlled; but it burned all night, and when seen from the Great Wall it looked like a huge torch.
June 17.
Just one week ago to-day we got the telegram that the combined forces of England, the United States, France, Japan, etc., now at Taku, numbering 1,600 men and over, had practically seized a train at Tien-tsin, and, with workmen on board to mend the track where it had been derailed, had left at 10 a.m. to go to the relief of the Legations in Peking. Night and day, ever since that telegram came, we have been looking for them. The day after we received the news that they had started the Chinese cut the telegraph-wires, and so for one week we have been absolutely cut off from all communication.
No messenger has been able to get through the city gates, as they are carefully watched by the Chinese authorities, except—and I am proud of this—except that one old man whom Mr. Squiers had been good to (he used to be an old gardener of theirs) got through to Captain McCalla, who is with Admiral Seymour, and is in command of 100 men—Americans. The gardener had been able to deliver to him notes from Mr. Squiers, giving him most important information about ways and means to get into Peking in case they meet with opposition, and to bring back an answer, as well as other notes from commanders of other nationalities, to their respective Legations in Peking. From these letters we rather imagine that this “Tower of Babel” relief party does not agree as well as it might, but then, whoever expected a “Tower of Babel” to speak and work in unison? Certainly never before the miracle!
So it is due to Mr. Squiers’s personal management that we or any other nationality have heard anything from this party of 1,600 men, which undoubtedly must be but the beginning of large numbers of troops for what Lord Charles Beresford terms “the break-up of China.” Our Legation, thanks entirely to Mr. Squiers’s efforts, is the only one which has been in touch at all with the approaching column, and, by his minute instructions, when they get here they will be able to advance into the heart of our district—through the Water Gate—without having to take any of the city citadel gates. They say that in all crises, political or otherwise, some one man comes forward, takes the bull by the horns, so to speak, and does a man’s work. Mr. Squiers, as far as all the Americans here feel, is the man in Peking.