The temporary station at Peking, built of planks and galvanized iron, stands in the midst of this landscape. Very little is to be seen of the high walls of the city, which are almost entirely hidden by trees, and by a slight rising in the land. Nothing indicates that the gates of the capital of the oldest Empire in the world are so near. In order to traverse the mile which separates the station from the entrance to Peking, it is necessary to exchange the most highly perfected of human conveyance for the most barbaric. The Chinese are unwilling that the stranger should dispense, in order to enter their most holy capital, with a thorough jolting in their national carriage, unto which the Siberian tarantass may be compared as the most luxurious of vehicles. Two enormous wheels, covered with iron and garnished with a triple row of nails, support this shapeless waggon, which is protected by a blue awning, and is dragged along by two mules harnessed one in front of the other. Whilst the driver sits in front under the awning, the hapless traveller has to accommodate himself on the floor, with his legs stretched out in front of him. Now begins the torture, for one is literally jolted about against the wooden sides of the cart like a pill in a box. Presently the wheel goes over a huge stone, only to fall into a deep hole, or stick in a rut. Meanwhile, the diabolical waggon behaves in a most abominable manner, to the unutterable agony of its wretched inmate, who lives in terror of being either precipitated into the mud, or of having his brains knocked out by the collapse of the whole structure. Of this latter catastrophe there is little or no likelihood, for about the only good quality this appalling conveyance can boast of is solidity: nothing could break it. About twenty minutes after leaving the station a high battlemented wall, surrounded by a mud-filled moat, is reached. Next, you pass over a bridge, beyond which a gate admits into a sort of half-moon surrounded by walls, beyond which is yet another gate admitting to the city proper, where, after another hour’s jolting, the unhappy traveller alights at a hotel in Legation Street kept by a Frenchman.