The day before yesterday a letter came to Sir R. Hart from the Yamen, asking him to be so kind as to send a telegram to London telling the people there of our safety, because the different Governments were clamouring for news of their Ministers, and if he (Sir Robert) would send this telegram, it would be received as truth by the world, but they could not allow the Ministers to use their own codes. Sir Robert answered immediately that the Ministers were quite right to decline to telegraph without cipher, and that he distinctly refused to send any telegram of such a nature as to reassure the world, because if he telegraphed the truth, the world would be so horrified that they would not believe his telegram. Well answered, Mr. Inspector-General. I had the good luck to-day of being allowed to go over our defences on the Wall, and saw all of our protective barricades while getting there. Baron von Rahden and Mr. Squiers took me, and, needless to say, it was most interesting and thrilling. The conditions I had heard discussed for nearly two months I can now understand by seeing them all. I could also now understand the all-pervading charnel-house smells which at times during the siege have almost caused us to faint. On each defended barricade loopholes have been made so that we can see, to some degree at least, the enemy. In many instances the loopholes are arranged with small mirrors, as the Chinese snipers often hit even these peepholes when a sentry’s eye is seen, so that this further protection has been deemed necessary. I looked through one from a barricade in the Hanlin, and what I saw was what I might see in looking through the wicket-gate of a horror chamber at the Eden Musée in New York. A group of gorgeously-apparelled Boxers with their insignia were pitilessly caught by death in a mad dash at this barricade, and there they were, stiff and stark, nearly all in the furious attitudes of assault! Even the standard-bearer was stiffly and conscientiously gripping his gay-coloured pennant. A couple were shot in the back as they had started to run, and were lying flat on the ground, but a dozen or so, making up the body of the attacking party, held these horrible life-like positions with the most incredible rigidity. The sentry tells us that this hideous, almost theatrically posed, death-group has been thus for a couple of days. The Chinese would not come for their bodies, we could not, and there they were to remain until the carrion-dogs finished them, or until they eventually decomposed.