Our first halt was beside a well whose waters are so deliciously crystalline and cold that they seemed to our parched and dusty throats as a true elixir. So famous is this pure spring that the daily supply for the Imperial Palace is brought thence in barrels, in a cart flying a yellow flag, with an inscription in black characters stating that it travels on the Emperor's business—a warning to all men to make way for it. The water near the city is all bad and brackish, so such a spring as this is a priceless boon. This wonderland has been so often described since its destruction, that in its present aspect the whole seems familiar ground; but it is new to me to learn anything concerning it in its palmy days, from the pen of an eyewitness, and so I have been much interested in reading a curious account of these Imperial pleasure-grounds written in 1743 by Mons. Attiret, a French missionary, whose talent for painting led to his receiving an order to make drawings for the Emperor at the Summer Palace. He tells how he and his companions were conducted to Peking by a Chinese official, who would on no account allow them to look out of the windows of their covered boats to observe the country, still less to land at any point. The latter part of the journey they were carried in litters, in which they were shut up all the day long, only halting at wretched inns. Naturally, when they were released from this tedious captivity and beheld these beautiful grounds—the Yuen-Ming-Yuen—the Garden of gardens, they supposed themselves in Paradise, and here they seem to have remained for a considerable time. M. Attiret describes the ornamental buildings, containing the most beautiful and valuable things that could be obtained in China, the Indies, and even Europe—ancient vases of fine porcelain, silk cloths of gold and silver, carved furniture of valuable wood, and all manner of rare objects. He counted no less than two hundred of these palaces, each of which he declared to be large enough to accommodate the greatest nobleman in Europe with all his retinue. Some of these towns were built of cedar-wood, brought at great expense from a distance of fifteen hundred miles; some were gilded, painted, and varnished. Many had their roofs covered with glazed tiles of different colors, red, yellow, blue, green, and purple, arranged in patterns. What chiefly astonished the artist was the variety which had been obtained in designing these pleasure houses, not only as regarded their general architecture but such minor details as the forms of the doors and windows, which were round, oval, square, and of all manner of angled figures, while some were shaped like fans, others like flowers, vases, birds, beasts, and figures. In the courts and passages he saw vases of porcelain, brass, and marble filled with flowers, while in the outer courts stood mythological figures of animals, and urns with perfumes burning in them, resting on marble pedestals.