VI. THE CITY OF SOOCHOW.

I

VERY naturally despaired of seeing poor Sêou Jâe again and at last abandoned the hopeless quest. Even Ah Shun, though a consummate master of his profession, was obliged to acknowledge himself baffled by the insidious cunning of her abductors.

Three weeks had thus passed without any tidings, when one evening, while I was reading near the open window of my sittingroom, a small piece of bamboo was thrown in with accurate aim. from the road beneath, alighting on a small table beside me. I looked out, but could see no one, and on examining the missile, found it was hollow. In this tube a Chinese letter had been secreted.

It was very brief and hurriedly written on a rough piece of paper, and was from Sêou Jâe:

"Save me-my heart is sick. They are carrying me away to Soochow in a boat-we are nearly there. They not are unkind, but if you receive this, try and rescue me."

I would try. There was no time to be lost. Writing off a couple of business letters, I ordered my brougham, and drove off to Ah Shun's house, but he was out.

Back I went, and told my boy, Ah Way, who was an intelligent young fellow, to prepare to accompany me to Soochow at once, and sent him out to purchase necessary provisions and hire a proper light-draft native house-boat for the journey.

I bundled a few things into a portmanteau, and, within an hour after receiving the letter, went aboard the boat, for which

I arranged to pay three dollars a day and one dollar for the crew's "chow" money.

It would not interest the reader were I to give a detailed account of our passage to Soochow; let it be sufficient for me to relate that we followed the course of the Soochow Creek from its mouth, and owing to the low tide and want of wind, did not arrive at the village of Wang-deu-a distance of nineteen milesuntil eleven o'clock next morning. Making fair progress throughout that day, sometimes sailing, but more often poling, we passed the departmental city of Taitsang the same evening.

Owing to the somewhat anti-foreign feeling that seemed to exist there manifesting itself in sundry brickbats and other missiles which came hurtling about the boat in a very suggestive manner-we thought it prudent not to stop, so proceeded on our course with every despatch, being favoured throughout the night with a fair breeze which died away towards morning. It was not until very late in the afternoon that we arrived at Kwin* about fifty-four miles from Shanghai.

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The remaining twenty-one miles-which seemed very long ones were through a broad and straight canal. On the night of the third day we sighted the moated walls, over thirty feet in height, of this far-famed and magnificent city, the capital of Kiangsu, and the silk metropolis of the Orient, founded during the lifetime of Confucius-five hundred years before the coming of Christ, and about the same time as the second temple of Jerusalem was completed, in the time of Ezra.

It is built on the banks of the Grand Canal, the aquatic highway of the Middle Kingdom, and is nearly eighty miles to the westward of Shanghai, between the Bay of Hangchow and the mighty Yangtsze or "Son of the Sea," that receives the waters of the canal some forty miles northward of the city, which boasts of six gates-the Tse-mun on the north, the Pen-mun on the south, the Sou-mun and Fu-mun on the east, and the Chang-mun and Seu-mun on the west, the latter gate facing a range of lofty

* For sometime the headquarters of Major-afterwards General Gordonduring his advance on Soochow, when the city was held by the Taiping insurgents.

mountains. Beyond these lies the Tai Hu, or Great Lake, commonly known as the Inland Sea, that is five miles in breadth and thirty in length, and in the centre of which are numbers of picturesque hilly islands, covered with the choicest flowers and most beautiful groves of trees-orange, lemon, peach, plum, pomegranate, pepo and yangmei. On these "Enchanted Isles," as they are called, the finest silk is cultivated.

Throughout the eighteen provinces Soochow is reverently spoken of as an earthly Paradise-"above is Heaven, and below Soochow," the Chinese say; and the dearest wish of a Chinaman's heart is to pass his days of retirement in "Beautiful Soo," where, through three-quarters of the year, flowers bloom incessantly, where the most bewitching of Celestial ladies, with their elegant "golden lilies," live in queenly affluence; and where gilded pleasure boats-with satin lounges and velvet cushions-glide to and fro on romantic excursions to the Elysian isles of the peaceful Inland Sea.

Among the finest edifices within the walls of this city are four pagodas, three fallen into ruin, and one-the rarest and most magnificent piece of architecture of its kind in the land-the Low-mun Ta-with its nine stories and lofty outer galleries and pinnacle-topped roof which rises majestically two hundred feet and more above the palaces below. The topmost gallery-reached by a broad spiral staircase through its stem-looks away over a vast expanse of strikingly beautiful country, over the far-famed Hukushan hill, and its once celebrated gardens, the olden haunts of the ancient sons of Han.

Two thousand years ago the traveller in this great archaic city-then the capital of the Kingdom of Wu-traversed the same cobble-stone pavements of to-day, and paused to admire, with reverent awe, the palatial halls and palaces, even then covered with the moss and ivy of centuries, which still live to grace this honoured statue of antiquity.

Soochow is encased by two walls, an outer and inner, the inner one being thirty-five feet high, and mounted at intervals with high

* A poetical name for the small cramped feet of Chinese women. I believe one learned author erroneously calls them "water-lilies."