The Tartar City is pierced by broad roads running at right angles to the walls. From them a network of smaller lanes leads off, usually extremely narrow and always unsavoury, being used as the dumping‐ground of all the filth and refuse of the neighbouring houses. The main streets even are unpaved and ill‐kept. The centre portion alone is occasionally repaired in a slovenly fashion, apparently by heaping on it fresh earth taken from the sides, which have consequently become mere ditches eight or nine feet below the level of the middle causeway and the narrow footpaths along the front of the houses. After heavy rain these fill with water and are transformed into rushing rivers. Occasionally on dark nights a cart falls into them, the horse unguided by a sleepy driver, and the occupants are drowned. Such a happening in the principal thoroughfares of a large and populous city seems incredible. I could scarcely believe it until I was once obliged almost to swim my pony across a main street with the water up to the saddle‐flaps, and this after only a few hours’ rain. A Chinaman, by the way, will never rescue a drowning man, from the superstition that the rescuer will always meet with misfortune from the hand of the one he has saved. The houses are mostly one story high, dingy and squalid. The shops, covered with gaudy red and gold sign‐boards, have little frontage but much depth, and display to the public gaze scarcely anything of the goods they contain. All along the principal streets peddlers establish themselves on the narrow side‐walks, spread their wares on the ground about them, and wait with true Oriental patience for customers. The houses of the richer folk are secluded within courtyards, and cannot be seen from the public thoroughfares. On the whole, Pekin from the inside is not an attractive city; and as the streets in dry weather are thick with dust that rises in clouds when a wind blows, and in wet are knee‐deep in mud where not flooded, they do not lend themselves to casual strolling. The broad tops of the walls are much preferable for a promenade. Access to them is gained by ramps at intervals. They are clean, not badly paved though often overgrown with bushes, and afford a good view over the surrounding houses, and in the summer offer the only place where a cooling breeze can be found.