I have now ridden to every point of the compass in the city, and even beyond, and I have inspected everything with a critical eye.  It is wonderful how things shape themselves.  There are now some portions of the city that are reasonably peaceful even at night, and where even women can come forth and walk openly about; others that are quiet on the surface and yet throw up mad things at all hours; and lastly, there are those where riot and disorder still reign supreme.  Some people estimate that half or even three quarters of the native population have fled, and that this accounts for the curious silence which now reigns, only to be broken by the noise of marauders or marching troops.  Yet I do not believe that so many of the population have really fled; many people remain half hidden in quiet spots, where, packed dozens and dozens in a single house, they tremulously await the return to happier days.  The Chinese, I sometimes think, of all peoples of this earth must have their historic sense enormously developed.  Thousands of years of civil wars and countless endless sieges have placed them in the dilemma of to-day more often than it is possible to say.  Only fifty years ago the Taipings made whole provinces suffer the way Peking has now suffered....  Such things must live in the blood of a people and never be quite forgotten....

You muse like this very often when you ride out and meet lumbering military trains going back to Tientsin, laden with countless chests of loot.  What immense quantities of things have been taken!  Every place of importance, indeed, has been picked as clean as a bone.  Now that the road is well open, dozens of amateurs, too, from the ends of the earth have been pouring in to buy up everything they can.  The armies have thus become mere bands of traders eternally selling or exchanging, comparing or pricing, transporting or shipping.  Every man of them wishes to know whether there is a fortune in a collection of old porcelain or merely a competence, and whether it is true that a long robe of Amur River sables, when the furs are perfect and undyed, fetch so many hundreds of pounds on the London market.  There are official military auctions going on everywhere, where huge quantities of furs and silks and other things come under the hammer.  Yet it is noticed that the very best things always disappear before they can be publicly sold.  A phrase has been invented to meet the case. “Cherchez le general,” people say.

Even with these sales the stocks never seem to sink lower.  There are always fresh finds being made—­seizures made officially by an officer or two with a few files of men so that there may be some reasonable excuse to offer to those who persist in remaining mulishly prudish.  These new finds are, of course, called treasures-trove.  They are good words.  Looting has officially ceased; is, indeed, forbidden under the most severe penalties.  That is why it is being systematised and made open and respectable.  It is in the blood.  You cannot escape it; it still follows you everywhere, no matter how far away you go.