Prince Ching is so miserably poor, they say, and has so little of the things he most needs, that he has been forced to borrow looted sycee from corps commanders and to give orders on the Southern Treaty ports in payment.  It is an extraordinary situation.

A number of little expeditions have already been pushed out forty, fifty and even sixty miles into the country, feeling for any remnants of the Chinese armies which may remain.  I went with one of these faute-de mieux, as Peking has become so gloomy, and there is so little to do that it fills one with an immense nostalgia to remain and continually to contemplate the ruins and devastation, from which there can be no escape.

Never shall I regret that little expedition into the rude hills and mountains, where climbs in wonderful manner the Great Wall of China.  It was divine.  There was a sense of freedom and of openness which no one who has not been a prisoner in a siege can ever experience.  In the morning sweet-throated cavalry trumpets sounded a reveille, which floated over hill and dale so chastely and calmly that one wished they might never stop.  How those notes floated and trembled in the air, as grey daylight was gently stealing up, and how good the brown earth smelt!  I almost forget the other kind of trumpet—­that cruel Chinese trumpet which only shrieks and roars.

Each day we rode farther and farther away, and higher and higher, beating the ground and examining the villages, from which whole populations had fled, to see that no enemy was secretly lurking.  Travelling in this wise, and presently climbing ever higher and higher, we came at last to little mountain burgs, with great thick outer walls and tall watch-towers, where in olden days the marauders from the Mongolian plains were held in check until help could be summoned from the country below.  It was a wonderful experience to travel along unaccustomed paths and to come on endless ruined bastions and ivy-clad gates, which closed every ingress from Mongolia.  Once these defences must have been of enormous strength.

One night, after journeying for a long time, we camped in one of these little mountain burgs, taking full possession, so that there should be no treachery while it was dark.  The night passed quietly, for even fifty miles beyond Peking the terror lies heavy on the land, and in the morning we wandered to the massive iron-clad gates and the tall watch-towers which stood sentinel on either side to see if there was anything to be had.  How old these were, how very old!  For, mounting the staircase leading to the towers, we found that, although the rude rooms beneath showed signs of having been recently occupied, the stone steps which led to the roof-chambers were covered with enormous cobwebs and great layers of dust, showing that nothing had been disturbed for very many years.  That was as it should be.  At the very top of one tower we discovered a locked door, and beating it in amid showers of dust, we penetrated a room such as a witch of mediaeval Europe would dearly have loved.  Nothing but cobwebs, dust, flapping, grey-yellow paper and decay.  It was immensely old.