Immediately on rising from table we donned our hats, saluted _a la Chinoise_ by shaking our clasped hands in each other's faces, "Nin ching. Poo sung, poo sung," and took our departure, bowing repeatedly and walking backwards. CHAPTER VII AROUND PEKING The translation of the word Peking is "capital of the North," and is so called in contradistinction to Nanking[1] or "capital of the South." Peking is not a Chinese city at all, although generally supposed to be so, but a Tartar city, which, instead of the jumble of narrow, paved streets habitually found in all Chinese towns, was originally designed and laid out on a plan probably excelling in grandeur that of any other city in the world. That the result, as seen in the city of to-day, is but a mockery of the magnificent idea which possessed the master mind that conceived it, is due to that trait of the Mongolian temperament which exhausts itself in the conception and completion of some gigantic undertaking, leaving it thenceforth to moulder and decay, until in succeeding ages it stands gaunt witness of human wisdom, folly and neglect. Such are Peking, the Great Wall and the Grand Canal. Although adjoining the Tartar, there is a Chinese city, it is so squalid and of such mean pretensions that with the exception of a single street it is of but little interest to Europeans, so that when speaking of Peking it is the Tartar city alone that one has in mind. Surrounded by an immense rectangular wall, some sixty feet in height, with a width of twenty feet at the top and forty feet at the base, and pierced at regular intervals by picturesque and towering gateways, between which wide boulevards traverse the city from end to end and from side to side, but which, instead of being paved and lighted, are but lanes of filth, ankle deep in dust during dry weather, to be quickly changed by rain into rivers of black mud, continuously churned up by the wheels of springless carts, and spattered far and wide by the plunging feet of straining quadrupeds. On either side of, and frequently several feet below, these highways are mud paths, along which pedestrians wend a varied way, avoiding cesspools, stepping over transverse timbers or circumventing squatters' huts, showered on the while by splashings from the highroad or blinded by clouds of refuse-laden dust. The only attempt at lighting is by means of lanterns, which, with heavy wooden frames covered with paper instead of glass and placed at intervals of perhaps a quarter of a mile, throw out rays to the extent of one candle-power each.