Not long after my arrival in Peking the great heat set in, and the thermometer rose to 108° in the shade; the smells became intolerable—it was as if the city were one vast shrine in honour of Venus Cloacina—it was time to fly to the hills. Saurin and I had engaged a lovely Buddhist temple called Pi Yün Ssŭ, the Temple of the Azure Clouds, and thither we rode out one fine day in July, passing over a beautiful plain studded with farmsteads picturesquely shaded by tall trees, prosperous villages, and burial places, the romantic charm of which apparently compensates the Chinese peasant in death for the dreariness in which he contentedly passes his life—a mechanical process of eating, drinking and sleeping without hope, without ambition, without more thought for the morrow than is involved in ploughing and sowing, reaping and threshing. The trees which bear witness to the loving care with which the graveyards are tended, and make the villages look so snug and homelike, were a delight. Groves of poplars, ailanthus, the aromatic cedrela and willows, cast refreshing lights and shades, good to look upon. Not far from Pa Pao Shan stands a noble group of the maidenhair tree, Salisburia adiantifolia, while the cemeteries are darkly shaded by tall Chinese junipers, and the weird lace-bark pine, Pinus Bungeana, whose stems and branches, richly embroidered with silver patches, gleam ghostlike among the more brilliant foliage. Nestled among the picturesquely wooded recesses of the western mountains, some twelve to fifteen miles from Peking, are a number of temples, each more enchanting than the last, marvels of architecture, decorated with all the skill in which Chinese art excels. Here at least there is no decay—no ruin. Worm and weather are kept at bay by the offerings of the faithful who come to _Kwang Miao_, to pay homage to the temple, and by the few dollars for which the priests are willing to hire out their guest-chambers to the foreign devils seeking a refuge from the pestilential terrors of the urban summer. Quite one of the most beautiful of these was the Temple of the Azure Clouds. As picturesque as its name, it was built in tiers on the mountain side, and on each terrace was a shrine—statues of black marble and white, alti-rilievi and bassi-rilievi portrayed kings and warriors, gods and goddesses and fabled monsters, all of rare workmanship, legends writ in stone that the study of a lifetime would hardly suffice to master, and all set in a surrounding of rock work, fountains, woods and gardens before which an European landscape gardener might commit suicide in sheer despair. From the highest of these terraces, in front of a marvellous Indian idol with ten heads in tiers of three surmounted by one, there is a grand panoramic view, with the sad-coloured walls and quaint towers of Peking in the dim distance.