whole dinner party. So our portraits were taken in the room where we had dined.

The progress of the foreign settlement of Tientsin is a fair indication of progress in China. The name "Tientsin" means "Heaven's Ford." The city lies at the junction of the Peiho River with the Grand Canal. It is the largest city in the province, next to Pekin, and commercially has more importance, because Pekin is simply a capital given over to officials and soldiers, while Tientsin is the depot for a large trade. The population of the Chinese town is estimated at half a million, although there are no statistics that can be depended upon.

The port was opened in 1860, under the treaty enforced by the British at the time of the campaign that culminated in the glorious and ever-memorable destruction of the Summer Palace. At that time the only Europeans were the few missionaries who lived in the Chinese town. We made a tour of the town in chairs, and nothing more dismal and dreary have we seen in China. The streets were covered with dust, the sun shone down upon hard, baked walls; the sewers were open, and the air was laden with odors that suggested pestilence and explained the dreadful outbreaks of typhus and small-pox with which the city is so often visited. One of the first sights that attracted me was the number of people whose faces were pitted

with small-pox. Mr. Holcombe informed me that small-pox had no terror for the Chinese, and that they did not believe it was contagious. In walking along the line of one of the Viceroy's regiments drawn up to receive the General, it seemed as if other soldier's face bore marks of the disease. One visit every to Tientsin, especially under the burning sun which has beamed upon us during our stay, was enough for observation and curiosity.

The foreign settlement runs along the river. Streets have been laid out. Houses stand back in the gardens. Trees throw their shadow over the lanes. The houses are neat and tasteful, and the French Consulate is especially a striking building. This, however, was built by the Chinese as an act of reparation for the Tientsin massacre-one of the saddest events in the recent history of China. The American Consulate is a pleasant, modest little house, that stands in the center of a garden. The garden had been turned into a conservatory on the occasion of the General's visit, flowers in great profusion havIng been brought from all parts of the settlement. The whole settlement seemed to unite in doing honor to the General, and his hearty sympathy, in which every one joined, was among he most agreeable features of the General's visit to Tientsin. Even the captain of the British gun-boat showed his good-will by sending his crew and marines to act as a guard of honor at The house of the consul. There was nothing oppressive in the ospitality, as has been the case in so many places visited by he General. The French consul, Mr. Dillon, gave a dinner nd a garden party at which all the inhabitants attended. The rounds were beautifully illuminated. One of the features of ne dinner at the French consul's was the presence of the Viceroy. This was the first time the Viceroy had ever attended dinner party at which Europeans were present with their ives. The only difference in the arrangement of the table as that the General escorted the Viceroy to the table, the dies coming in after and sitting in a group on one side of the ble. It was a quaint arrangement and not without its adantages, and the Viceroy, notwithstanding he was breaking

through customs as old as the civilization of China, and apt to bring down upon him the censure of conservatives and the displeasure of the censors who sit in Pekin in judgment upon all officers of the empire, high and low, seemed to enjoy the feast. The fête at the French consul's was made brilliant by a

display of fireworks, which gave us a new idea of what was possible in pyrotechny under the cunning hands of the Chinaman. There was also a display of jugglery, the Viceroy, the General, and the ladies of the party sitting on the balcony and watching the performers. I was told that the Viceroy had never even seen a Chinese juggler before, and he certainly seemed to be pleased with the show. There was nothing startling

FROM TIENTSIN TO PEKIN.

379 about the tricks, except that what was done was pure sleight of hand. There was no machinery, no screens and curtains and cupboards. All that the players required were a blanket and a fan. They stood on the lawn and performed their tricks, with the crowd all about them, drawing bowls full of water and dishes of soup and other cumbrous and clumsy articles from im‐ possible places.

Our journey from Tientsin to Pekin was an experience in Chinese civilization. The direct distance from Tientsin to Pekin, as the crow flies, is eighty miles. By river it is one hundred and fifty miles. I have seen some curious rivers, but none so curious as the Peiho. It is a narrow, muddy stream, running through a low, alluvial country, bordered with crumbling clay banks that break and fall into the water like the banks of the upper Missouri. Colonel Grant, who has had army experience on the upper Missouri, notes the resemblance between the two rivers. The Peiho runs in all directions, varying in width from twenty to a hundred feet, in depth from six feet to ten inches. The soil is rich, and our journey was through green and smiling fields of rice and wheat. We were in home latitudes, and although the sun was warmer than we had found it at any point since leaving Saigon, it was a relief to look over green meadows and swaying fields of corn; to see apple trees, and be able in the morning and evening to step ashore and stride away over the meadows. Now and then familiar orchards, or clumps of trees that are called orchards, came upon the landscape to give it dignity, and near the trees clusters of small houses built of mud, baked and burned like the houses in Egypt, with this difference, that while the Egyptian houses are unroofed mud walls, with only room enough for the stones on which the corn is ground, and for the holes in which the family burrowed, these Chinese homes had pretensions to comfort. There are severe winters on the Peiho, when the snow falls and the frost binds the earth, and cold, searching winds come all the way from Siberia. From December to March the ice locks up the river, and at no time of the year have you the gentle, gracious climate of the Nile. The absence of stone

makes clay a necessary element in building. If there were roads in China stone could be brought from quarries. The absence of roads prevents one section, like the Peiho, from enjoying advantages which nature has bestowed upon other sections, like those, for instance, which border on Mongolia. The Chinaman has no world to draw from but the world immediately around him, and all the resources of his empire beyond the reach of a day's journey are as far away as the resources of India or Japan.

Steam has never disturbed the waters of the upper Peiho.

The barbarian brings

his huge engines as far as Tientsin, but even this is a serious effort, and there are few things a mariner would rather not do than make his way from the Taku forts at the mouth of the river to the Tientsin wharves. Our good and well-handled vessel, the "Ashuelot," made the trip, and it seemed to me that the

only seamanship required was patience

tempered with resignation. The "Ashuelot" was built for Chinese waters, and is kept on the Chinese coast because she can run in and out of awkward corners like a living, useful creature. She reminds you of the web-footed gun-boats, of which Lincoln spoke in one of his homely war documents, amphibious craft, almost as useful on land as on water, and to be trusted in everything but a high sea. But the Peiho was too eccentric even for the "Ashuelot," and she came up the river caroming from bank to bank, bulging into the mud, scraping over bars, sometimes lying across the river from bank to bank like a bridge