Desirous of seeing the scene of this heroic defence, I set out one day to visit the cathedral in company with some officers of the Fusiliers and of my own regiment. The ground being dry, we chose rickshas for our vehicles in preference to Pekin carts, which are as uncomfortable a form of conveyance as any I know. Our coolies ran us along at a good pace, for the Pekinese ricksha‐men are exceedingly energetic; indeed, the Chinaman is the best worker I have ever seen, with the possible exception of the Corean boatmen at Chemulpo. The Hong Kong dock labourers are a model that the same class in England would never copy. One day in Dublin I watched three men raising a small paving‐sett a few inches square from the roadway. Two held the points of crowbars under it while the third leisurely scratched at the surrounding earth with a pickaxe, pausing frequently to wipe his heated brow and remark that “hard work is not aisy, begob!” I wondered what a Chinaman would have said if he had seen that sight. Close to the Peitan we found ourselves in a broad street which was being re‐made by the French, who had named it “Rue du General Voyron” after their commander‐in‐chief. In it were many newly‐opened cafés and drinking‐shops, placarded with advertisements of various sorts of European liquors for sale within. Turning off this road into a narrow lane, we suddenly came upon the gate of the Peitan. The cathedral is a beautiful building of the graceful semi‐Gothic type of modern French churches, lightly constructed of white stone. It is crowned by airy pinnacles and looks singularly out of place among the squalid Chinese houses that crowd around it. At first we could not discern any marks of the rough handling it had received, and marvelled at its good preservation. But on approaching closer, we saw that the masonry was chipped and scarred in a thousand places. Scarce a square yard of the front was without a bullet or shell‐hole through it. The walls were so thin that the shells had passed through without exploding; and it seemed almost incredible that any being could have remained alive within them during the hellish fire to which they had so evidently been subjected.