PEKIN THE FOUL.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 142, 17 June 1899, Page 2 (Supplement)

PEKIN THE FOUL.

THE MOST IMPRESSIVE SIGHT IN THE FLOWERY KINGDOM.

From the Western Hills, a distance of 13 miles, Pekln appears a mathematical square, of which the dark grey lines can be dimly traced among the green and gold of a richly cultivated plain stretching away to the sea. The sun is flashed back from the glided turrets and yellow tiles of the Imperial palace in its centre. It is only when right under them that one obtains a first complete view of their stupendous line,the most impressive sight in China.

Grey and grim they stand, these monuments of the conquering Manchu; bastion •after bastion stretching away into the distance, from which the towers, marking" the nine great gates in the 13-mlle square, stand out like giant sentinels,

The walls themselves, which rise out of sand dust drifted from the s. sppes, are built of earth, faced with brick. To the interstices cling many a bush, and even tree. From the gate towers frown tier upon tier of painted cannon.

Inside the gates, one finds oneself In a Tartar camp; a wilderness of fiat, grey brick, one-storeyed houses, divided Into squares by earthen tracks some 60 yards broad, which run from north to south, from east to west, from gate to gate.

In the centre of the square is a small, wooded hill at the rear of the palace, and dotted with gilded summer-houses. Up to its foot, from the great gate In the centre of the south wall, lies thei 'Forbidden City,' enclosed in walls of vermilion; a succession of yellow-tiled pavilions, glittering in the sun.

Against the blue sky quiver the steady wings of dozens of large, brown hawks— the city scavengers—and through the clear, dry air thrills a continual sweet, sad strain from the small Aeolian harbs, or, more properly, organs with pipes, fixed—for protection against the hawks— in the tails of the wheeling flocks of pigeons; one in each flock, selected! no doubt, for strength and steadiness, bearing the screaming- whistle. The streats themselves are filthy; a heavy canopy of dust hangs over them on stifling sumrtier evenings, to be turned to liquid mud, knee-deep, when the threatening tlouds have broken at last.—'Daily Mail.'