The native city of Tien-Tsin is surrounded by a high stone wall; and there is another wall still further out, around all of the settlements. The latter was erected during the war of 1860, when China was fighting the French and English. The wall would have made an excellent defence; but it was never manned, the Chinese soldiers contenting themselves with shooting off a vast amount of fire-crackers, in order to scare the enemy, and then running for their lives. Tien-Tsin, new and old, covers a good many miles of territory; for, while the houses and huts of brick, mud, wood, and bamboo are often huddled close together, yet there are numerous wide market-places and low spots often covered with water during a heavy rain. The streets are narrow, crooked, and dirty to the last degree. Paving, as we know it, is unknown, and so are sewers; and the consequence is that each street, or rather lane, soon becomes something of an open ditch, breeding disease and death. What struck Gilbert as peculiar on his first trip beyond Tongku were the numerous mounds which greeted his eyes, rearing their heads like so many ant-hills at every turn. He soon learned, however, that these were the well-known graves of China, scattered broadcast. In some cases these graves are deeply dug; but in others the dead are placed along the roadside, and covered only with a handful of earth or a bit of coarse matting. The young lieutenant’s duties at Tongku kept him close to the river front; and from time to time he saw floating on the stream the lifeless bodies of Chinese soldiers and Boxers, the latter easily to be identified by the curious symbols on their breasts, painted on their garments as a guard against all evils! Once he saw three Celestials floating together, each in the death-grip of the others; and the sight made him shudder more than anything he had witnessed in the Philippines. “Poor fellows! it’s a good deal of a pity to fight them,” he murmured. “They really don’t know what they are doing. I suppose, in their way, they imagine they are quite in the right.” Then he drew a long breath, and the soldier spirit came back to him. “But they have got to leave the missionaries and our representatives alone, and that is all there is to it.” The _Brooklyn_ and the _Oregon_, the two warships which had given such good accounts of themselves at the battle of Santiago Harbor, had not yet arrived at Taku, but were expected at any hour. The _Oregon_ had met with a slight mishap, and was in consequence undergoing some temporary repairs. General Chaffee was also expected very soon, with his troops from San Francisco.