temple. We found M. himself and a few other Englishmen waiting in the temple courtyard, the ma-foos and the ponies outside, and the pack clambering and scrambling at the high wooden doors of the kennels. A bottle of aniseed was produced, and the drag duly prepared. The business of trailing it was entrusted to a ma-foo, a gentleman distinguished above his fellows by a pair of English riding-breeches -the cast-off raiment of his master-which he wore somewhat incongruously above a pair of blue Chinese slippers lined with white fur. The line had been chosen in advance by a member of the hunt, who now started off with the ma-foo and disappeared along one of the sunken roads. They were given five minutes to get clear, at the end of which time the pack were loosed, and we got on our ponies and followed along the road.

The first obstacle we met with was not on the programme of the day, for in turning a corner of the sunken road we ran straight into a wedding. A red palanquin of enormous proportions, with fine brocade hangings and a large golden ball on top, carried by twentyfour bearers, was proceeding along the narrow track, surrounded by a troop of men and boys in gala dress carrying flags, paper lanterns, red lacquered boxes (containing the presents), and enormous gilt drums. The road was almost

entirely blocked by this brilliant cortège, and it was with some considerable difficulty that we squeezed our way past, much to the discomfiture of the bearers, and probably to the vast entertainment of the lady inside, whose retinue, gorgeously arrayed in scarlet coats and high- plumed hats, continued to line the road for a good hundred yards beyond.

The sunken road leading us out on to an open hillside, the pack were laid on the trail, and were soon well away. The scent was good, and the dogs (we call them so out of respect for their nobler brethren) ran hard for a mile or more without checking. The line took us across fields either recently ploughed, or sown with spring crops just appearing aboveground. In this part of the country divisions between fields hardly exist, consisting at most of very low banks, and the natural obstacles we had to cope with were a few sunken roads and the “ made" jumps ditches, earth banks, and reed fences-specially constructed for the hunt.

Our first check took place at the edge of a thick plantation of pines, which, from the glimpses one caught of clusters of gravestones rising among the tree-trunks, was evidently a family burial-ground. pack showed themselves hopelessly at fault, and had clearly overshot the line, so the master cast back, and in a few minutes "Ronald," the pointer, picked

The

up the scent, and went off again with the pack streaming behind him. A hard gallop of five minutes brought us to a frozen canal. Along its bank a string of camels was passing, loaded with baskets of coal, which they were bringing into Peking from the distant coal-mines of Shansi. Their drivers stopped and gaped with astonishment at the field galloping past them, while the beasts themselves reared their necks and gazed at the strange apparition from under their drooping lids with an expression an expression of blended surprise and disgust, which gave one just the impression of a number of elderly dowagers whose feelings have been mortally shocked.

The

effect of this was highly ridiculous, for the great Mongolian camel in his winter kit is, at the best of times, a laughablelooking creature, with his two tufted humps sticking up through his saddle, his preposterous fringe hanging down from his neck, and his baggy trousers of fleece ending off sharp at the knee. A baby camel who formed one of the party, and was attached by a rope to his mother's tail, was terrified out of his wits by the sight of the galloping ponies, and was narrowly saved by his master from finding a watery grave in the canal.

Near the point where we met with the camels a bridge crossed the canal, and the pack were divided in mind as to which bank to follow. However, the

camelmen, who by now had recovered their wits, told us that they had seen the layer of the drag go over the bridge and ride on in the direction of a ruined temple which stood among the trees a mile or two distant. Our huntsman, armed with a bugle, collected the scattering pack, and soon they had found the scent and were running hard towards the temple. Unfortunately, before going far, we came on a family of half-grown pigs rootling in a field of stubble. Promptly the pack split, and while Ronald and a few of the stalwarts held loyally to the scent, the rest, surrendering to their primitive instincts, went after the living quarry. A furious skelter ensued, the little black pigs running hard for a neighbouring farm, the dogs in hot pursuit, and the master and huntsmen chasing behind and harrying the rogues with lash and tongue. Only one of the pigs failed to save his bacon, and he, poor fellow, soon had the pack on top of him, with a terrier fast to each ear, and the rest of them worrying any odd portions of his tough little person. A few shrewd cuts of the lash soon restored his tormentors to their sense of duty; and though we left him still squealing blue murder, it was clear from the nimble way in which he joined his companions that he was not seriously hurt. The chief damage done was to the feelings of our master of hounds, who for the rest of the day

was mercilessly besieged with demands for a trotter !

One more sharp burst brought the run to an end. While we rested our ponies the pack was rewarded with a dead rabbit, produced from the pocket of one of the ma-foos, which they quickly broke up in the most approved fashion. The finish was near to the ruined temple, which, with its surroundings, made one of those fascinating bits of colour which give peculiar charm to the rather flat landscapes round Peking. A dry torrent-bed ran round the base of the slight mound on which the temple was built, and the pink-washed wall surrounding the temple grounds rose straight out of a welter of water-worn boulders and pebbles. Seen over the top of the yellow-tiled coping of the wall-the imperial yellow peculiar to the old emperors' properties-the gable-ends of the temple buildings peeped out, from among the higher branches of some ancient junipers, the blue and green tiles blending in a perfect harmony with the emerald foliage, and the beauty of the whole enhanced by a background of wintry blue sky. The Western Hills, now no more than a few miles away, were settling to sleep in the dying sunshine, every fold outlined in deep shadow. A glint of tiled roofs on a solitary foothill away to the northward, with a silvery expanse of lake as its foot, marked the site of the Summer Palace, that love

liest pleasaunce built on the "Hill of Ten Thousand Virtues "to replace the destruction of 1860, and now in its turn abandoned and empty. The hillside in front of us used to contain the imperial deer chase reserved for the emperors' huntings; and yet another relic of the Manchu days is a group of buildings not far from our halting-place, which, at emperors' burials, served as a mortuary chapel for lodging the coffin overnight at the end of the first day's journey from Peking to the distant Western Tombs.

Tombs of one sort or another are the dominant note in a Peking landscape. The Chinese dead are not herded together in dismal cemeteries, but buried out in the open fields, every man in his own plot of ground. The entire countryside is dotted thickly with graves, breaking at every step the ploughman's furrows. The great majority are nothing but earthen mounds rising a foot or two above the level of the ground, sometimes scattered singly, sometimes in a bunch of a score or more, protected by a crescent-shaped bank, where the head of a family lies among his descendants, his grave distinguished from theirs by a slightly loftier mound. These are the graves of the ordinary peasant, but a corpse of any importance is surmounted by some sort of stone monument, the commonest form being a plain dome which is frequently painted red.

The country through which we were hunting contains a goodly number of tombs of dukes and relatives of the former reigning family. Some are beautiful buildings in walled enclosures planted with evergreen trees with lodges outside, where the living descendants spend a few days every spring and autumn when they come to perform their ancestor - worship. One of the finest of these, where several princesses lie buried, is surrounded by the houses of Bannermen of the Imperial Banner, whose halberds stand in rows in the porch which gives entrance to the tomb. In contrast to these carefullytended sepulchres, stand the derelict graves of men whose line has died out, so that no one exists to perform the pious rites which are the prime duty of every Chinaman. These emblems of human vanity lie scattered among the bare fields, their walls broken down, and the cypresses felled by the ever - needy peasantry. Often the only surviving signs of what once were fine mausoleums are the curious ancestral tablets" which are set up in rows in front of the tombs of the mighty. The typical form of these is a giant tortoise (symbol of deathlessness) carrying on his back a tall upright slab, fifteen or twenty feet high, inscribed with the ancestral record, and carved in relief with a design of intertwined dragons. On our ride homewards we passed several of

these strange-looking shapes rising white and solitary among the ploughed fields, which had swallowed all trace of the graves of the men whose history was recorded on the worn marble.

By the time we came to the city gate it was already growing dark, and we exchanged our ponies for rickshas. Riding in the streets of the town when the thermometer passes freezing-point is made unpleasantly dangerous by the Pekinese mania for watering the roads, and so covering them with a sheeting of ice. No city in the world is, I suppose, so liberally watered. Thousands of coolies are employed ceaselessly on the job, working in couples, and armed with huge tubs and long-handled scoops of basket-work with which they sluice the water with no little skill among the feet of the passers-by. The tubs are replenished from the ubiquitous water-barrows, which in turn are filled from the open wells which exist at intervals along the side walks.

By the time we entered the Tartar City the street lamps were lit. In their flickering light we caught passing glimpses of the interiors of all kinds of shops. Here was a coffinmaker's full of great baulks of timber, and tiers of ready-made coffins of huge dimensions and curious lines, with stacks of cumbersome red-painted poles ready for the shoulders of the bearers. The next-door shop

was, by chance, that of a wedding purveyor, the fitful rays of whose lamp lit up rows of large gilded drums, red lacquered boxes, and all the glittering paraphernalia of a Chinese bridal procession. Out in the streets the hawkers were still plying, crying their wares with the help of the various instruments gongs, drums, jew's harps, castanets, and a dozen other implements of noise -which distinguish the different trades of the Peking street seller. Frozen ricksharunners, waiting for fares, cowered inside their rickshas to

get what protection they could from the icy cold, and beggars in nothing but sacking, and little enough of that, ran along by our sides whining for alms, and and muttering the eternal "laoyeh, laoyeh." 1

A twenty-minutes' run brings us to the wide glacis which, since the days of the siege, surrounds the Legation Quarter, and diving through a gateway in the bastioned, loopholed wall, we arrive back in our own little patch of England, which lies so strangely in the heart of this great Chinese city. G. E. H.