The great eastern artery that crosses the Tartar City is, of all the streets of old Pekin, the nearest to what it used to be; life here is becoming intense, the people swarm. For the length of a league this avenue, which is fifty metres wide,--of magnificent proportions, although now very much injured,--is invaded by thousands of platforms, sheds, tents, or in some cases simply umbrellas stuck in the ground, where the people who serve horrible drinks and food dispense their wares, always in delicate China very much decorated; there are charlatans, acupuncturers, Punch-and-Judy shows, musicians, and story-tellers. The crowd is divided into an infinite number of currents by all these small shops and theatres, like the waters of a river filled with islands, so that there is a constant eddy of human heads black with dust and filth. Rough, hoarse vociferations, in a quality of voice unfamiliar to our ears, are heard on all sides, to an accompaniment of grating violins, noisy gongs and bells. The caravans of enormous Mongolian camels, which all winter encumber the streets in endless processions, have disappeared in the solitudes of the North, together with their flat-faced drivers, who wish to escape the torrid heat; but their place in the central part of the street, reserved for animals and vehicles, is taken by numerous small horses and tiny carriages, and the cracking of whips is heard on all sides. On the ground in front of the houses, spread out upon the mud and filth, the extravagant rag-fair that began last autumn is still going on; the remains of so much pillage and burning are left that it seems as though there was no end to them,--magnificently embroidered clothing spotted with blood, Buddhas, grotesque figures, jewels, dead men's wigs, cracked vases, or precious fragments of jade. Behind all these ridiculous things, behind all this dusty display, the greater number of the houses, in contrast with the poverty-stricken appearance of the crowds, seem astonishingly rich in carvings and decorations,--a mass of openwork and fine gilding from top to bottom. Indefatigable artists, with the Chinese patience and skill which confound us, have carved crowds of little figures, monsters, and birds in the midst of flowers, and trees on which you can count the leaves. Last summer, while the Boxers were burning so continually, these astonishing façades, representing an incalculable amount of human labor, were consumed by the hundreds; they made Pekin a veritable museum of carving and gold, the like of which men of to-day will never again have the time to construct. SATURDAY, May 4.