Passed from the charge of one foreign contingent to another in this last campaign, the Summer Palace was at length entrusted to the care of the British and Italians. Desirous of visiting a spot renowned for its natural beauty as for its historical interest, a party of us sought and obtained permission to inspect it. And so one morning we stood in the principal courtyard of Chong Wong Foo and watched a procession of sturdy Chinese ponies being led up for us. The refractory little brutes protested vehemently against the indignity of being bestridden by foreigners; and all the subtlety of their grooms was required to induce them to stand still long enough for us to spring into the saddles. And then the real struggle began. One gave a spirited imitation of an Australian buckjumper. Another endeavoured to remove his rider by the simpler process of scraping his leg against the nearest wall. A third, deaf to all threats or entreaties, refused to move a step in any direction, until repeated applications of whip and spurs at length resulted in his bolting out of the gate and down the road. After a preliminary circus performance, our steeds finally determined to make the best of a bad job; and, headed by a guide, we set out for the palace. Our way lay at first through a very unsavoury part of the capital. Evil‐smelling alleys, bordered by open drains choked with the refuse of the neighbouring houses; narrow lanes deep in mire; squalid streets of tumbledown hovels—the worst slums of Pekin. Gaunt and haggard men scowled at us from the low doorways; naked and dirty babies sprawled on the footpaths and lisped an infantine abuse of the foreign devils; slatternly women stared at us with lack‐lustre eyes; and loathsome cripples shouted for charity. Splashing through pools of filthy water, dodging between carts in the narrow thoroughfares, we could proceed but slowly. The heat and stench in these close and fetid lanes were overpowering, and it was an intense relief to emerge at last on one of the broad streets that pierce the city and which led us to a gateway in the wall. One leaf of the wooden doors lay on the ground, the other was hanging half off its hinges. Both were splintered and torn, for they had been burst open by the explosion of a mine at the taking of Pekin. The many‐windowed tower above was roofless and shattered. On either hand, on the outer face of the wall, deep dints and scars showed where the Japanese shells had rained upon them in the early hours of that August morning, when the gallant soldiers of Dai Nippon[6] had come to the rescue of the hard‐pressed Muscovites.