But the dust! I have seen dust in many lands—one of the meannesses of Providence, poor Alfred Montgomery used to call it—notably in South Africa which, in that respect and some others, is bad to beat; but Peking outdoes them all. Fancy riding up to your horse’s hocks in a fine black powder, which, when the wind blows over the desert of Gobi, pervades everything; insidious, ineluctable, streaming in thin rays like the motes in a sunbeam through unsuspected chinks and crevices until you may trace your name with your finger on any single thing in your most cunningly protected room. In one of those dust-storms, thick as a London fog, I have known a boat leaving a ship outside the Taku forts, forced to pull round and round in blind circles until the black veil should lift, or rather fall, and daylight once more break through the gloom. And when the rainy season comes, then the streets of Peking are like canals in which what once was dust is now a noisome Acherontian slime. Peking stands in need of forgiveness for much. Smells that must be smelt to be believed; sights such as the Beggars’ Bridge, which are sickening horrors; squalid houses, suggesting indescribable interiors, for the manners and customs of the Po Hsing[53] are not attractive; streets ill-paved and never cleaned; much to offend the senses at every step, and yet, abuse it as we might, Peking as I knew it fifty years ago had about it a certain mysterious charm which I think most people felt, and which has never been so well described as by Baroness von Heyking in “Briefe die ihn nicht erreichten.” How cleverly, without any attempt at description, by a few magic words scattered here and there, she makes us feel the magic of the old, sad-coloured, grey, ruinous city! CHAPTER XVI PEKING We rode into Peking at the Hata Gate and threading our way through the throng, soon found ourselves outside the Liang Kung Fu, the palace of the Dukes of Liang, which was the English Legation, separated by a road from an almost dry canal. The great gates were thrown open by the escort man on duty and we rode in to receive the warmest welcome from Mr. Wade, the _chargé d’affaires_, who later became Sir Thomas Wade, K.C.B., G.C.M.G., and British Minister. I soon found that Sir Frederic Bruce had in no wise exaggerated the delight that was to be had in Mr. Wade’s society. He was at that time a man of forty-seven, but he looked older, for climate and a strenuous life during a quarter of a century into which he had packed more adventures and experiences than fall to the lot of most men in twice the time, had told upon him; but in character he was as gay as a boy, full of fun, with a keen sense of humour, and an excellent story-teller, a talent to which his powers as a mimic, of which I have already spoken, contributed not a little.