For while the enemy is pushing his lines cunningly and rapidly under our walls and outworks, we are running out counter-mines under his—­at least, we are attempting this by plunging a great depth into the earth, and only beginning to drive horizontally many feet below the surface line.  Hundreds of men are on this work, but the Peking soil is not generous; it is, indeed, a cursed soil.  On top there are thick layers of dust—­that terrible Peking dust which is so rapidly converted into such clinging slush by a few minutes’ rain.  Then immediately below, for eight feet or so, there is a curious soil full of stones and debris, which must mean something geologically, but which no one can explain.  Finally, at about a fathom and a half there is a sea of despond—­the real and solid substratum, thick, tightly bound clay, which has to be pared off in thin slices just as you would do with very old cheese.  This is work which breaks your hands and your back.  Somebody must do it, however; the same men who do everything help this along as well....

With all this mining going on many curious finds are being made, which give something to talk about.  In one place, ten feet below the surface, hundreds and hundreds of ancient stone cannon-balls have been found which must go back very many centuries.  Some say they are six hundred years and more old, because the Mongol conqueror, Kublai Khan, who built the Tartar City of Peking, lived in the thirteenth century, and these cannon-balls lie beneath where tilled fields must then have been.  Are they traces of a forgotten siege?  In other places splendid drains have been bared—­drains four feet high and three broad, which run everywhere.  Once, when Marco Polo was young, Peking must have been a fit and proper place, and the magnificent streets magnificently clean.  Now ...!

To-day the soldier-spy has brought in news that the Court is preparing to flee, because of the approach of our avenging armies, and that the moving troops and the hundreds of carts which can be seen picking their way through the burned and ruined Ch’ien Men great street in the Chinese city will all be engaged in this flight.  Our troops are advancing steadily, he says, driving everything before them.  Still no one believes these stories very much.  We have had six weeks of it now and several distinct phases.  Somehow it seems impossible that the whole tragedy should end in this unfinished way—­that thousands of European troops should march in unmolested and find us as we are....  There is practically no day duty now and very easy work at night.  One can have a good sleep now, but even this seems strange and out of place.

XIX

THE FIRST REAL NEWS

28th July, 1900.

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