is: “Those who have seen least, stare most!” There are more Jews (not the lost colonies of Chinese Jews absorbed by the Chinese Mohammedans of Honan, Kwangtung and Kansu provinces) in business at Tientsin than at any port in China, not excepting Hongkong. In the warehouse of the American Trading Company, at Tientsin, six hundred men of the Fifteenth United States Infantry were quartered in the stormy days of the first months of 1912. Peking stands at the end of the great seacoast plain as you go up from Tientsin by railway or by boat. Beyond rise the Hsi Shan (Western Mountains) and the Mongolian plateau and mountains. It is the most expansive city in the republic, because it is more built up than spacious Nanking; a court, a legation, a trading, an art, an educational, a health center in autumn, a military, but not a manufacturing center as yet, though it will be. It is more Mongolian and Manchu, perhaps, than pure Han Chinese. It is splendidly laid out, and with drainage and paved roads will attract fine equipages and even greater wealth than now resorts there. It has a water system, electric light, telephone, telegraph and railway service, wireless connection with the coast, a modern railway station at the famous Chien Men gate. Its fine Gothic Pe-Tang Cathedral, strangely within the purple imperial city, with its spires, looks as though it had been transported from France. Its porcelain temples are centers of wealth, if not of zeal and history. Its monuments, especially the city wall and gates, are the noblest. Its pavilions, like those in the late emperor’s garden, are the most artistic in the land. It is comparatively modern among the cities and capitals of China, going back only to 1150 A. D. as a provincial and national center. Coleridge has sung of the city. Kublai Khan, Marco Polo’s protector, was its first great emperor. The creator of Ming monuments, the artistic Yung Lo, is its next greatest emperor, and it was he who gave the present stamp to Peking. Its most illustrious Manchu emperor was Kang Hi, the potter, to whom Louis XIV. of France, signed himself as “your most dear and good friend, Louis.” The city is laid out on the plan of an immense Mongol camp of the plains, defense line within defense line three times, and not unlike Cæsar’s plans when on the march. The trading section of the city is filled with an immense gathering of camel, mule and pony trains, and the new railways bring coal from east and south. A master hand could turn the great camp into a hive of modern industry. Some day, perhaps soon, that will occur. The Peking market is well supplied by the Mongols of the plateau and the farmers of the Pechili plain, not to speak of what railways, canals and roads bring in from all points. More races and varied costumes are seen at Peking than at any other city, and the teak-barred shops are treasure houses. The Tartar city faces the north and in its center is the Forbidden, or Purple City, of the old Manchu court.