Nearly all the ports of the Celestial Empire are thus formed, and can only be entered during a few hours of the day. Even the mouth of the great Blue River is encumbered with shoals, and its famous rival, the Yellow River, in its lower basin, is divided up into such a multitude of channels that meander through the marshy lands as to interrupt all direct navigation from the sea. The Gulf of Pe-chi-li, which may be described as the port of Peking, although situated closer to the Equator than the Bay of Naples, or the mouth of the Tagus, seems, with its choked-up estuaries, its storm-beaten shores, its fogs and icy coat in winter, thoroughly typical of China and her traditional inhospitality, and her eagerness rather to repulse than to invite the stranger within her gates. From the anchorage outside the bar it is difficult to discern the lowlying coast; and the first objects to attract attention are mud forts, mud houses in mud villages, and mud heaps marking the graves in the cemeteries. This uninviting place is Ta-ku, beyond which, a little higher up, at Tang-ku, the Pei-ho ceases to be navigable for vessels of any tonnage. On landing, a surprise awaits you—the railway. Commenced by Li Hung-chang, for the purpose of transporting the coal from his mines at Kaiping, a few miles to the north-east, branches have been added, and since the summer of 1897 it takes the traveller to Peking viâ Tien-tsin. An hour and a half after leaving Tang-ku, I alighted at the former town amid a mob of noisy coolies, who pounced upon me and my luggage. We crossed the Pei-ho in a sampang instead of the ordinary ferry-boat which conveys the Celestials, packed together like sardines in a box, and stuck, apparently immovably, in the most extraordinary postures. From the landing-place, we were trotted in a jinrikisha drawn by a Chinaman through the Rue de France, up Victoria Road to the Astor House, an American hotel kept by a German; opposite it is a garden, over which a white flag with a crimson circle in its centre, the emblem of the Rising Sun, announces that the garden and the house belong to the Japanese Consul. Thus was I first initiated to the cosmopolitanism of a foreign concession in the Far East.