it to The Yenshikoh. tie "N.C, D, News." the Chinese name for the Trappist Monastery over the mountains to the north-west, almost duo west, of Poking some seventy or eighty miles, or four or five days' journey by mule, No one who had seen or attempted progress over those roads would wonder at the slowness of the journey. A French missionary described them as " chemis dos oiseaux." One day in the latter part of May, I sot out from the Peitang, the palace of the Roman Catholic Bishop, Mgr. Jarlin, and headquarters of the Lazarists, the splendour and magniliconce of which, with its boautifal build. ings, terraces, gardens,.and tessolated pavements adorned "with huge China bowls of flowers are well calculated to impress the native mind, The place, less well fortified than at present, in 1900 avas besieged by the Boxers, and the amissionarios and the 2,000 native Chri ians sholtorod in the enclosure were in hourly danger of massacre. Mgr. Sarthe, one of the four eoadjator bishops of the province, discussing the memorable drama with mo, remarked that no one eau have avy idea how terrible it was, momentarily expecting death. The Pagans declared that they saw white figures hovering over the building, at which they fired again and again, and wore scared into inactivity by the absence of result. This certainly suggests the thought of angelical protection.
\t-6.30 on the morning of the 19th my little blue Chinese waggon arrived with two mules, tandem. It was 5} ft. long by 23 ft, wide. My baggage was packed at the back. The fathers advised mo that the host way for safety and-comfort is to sit sideways on the board behind the shafts. If you sit back, when you get out of town, you are liable to sustain a fracture of the skull, with concession of the brei wherever the rosd is rough, and there are few places where there: is any respite, or anything like level travelling. Early inthe morning our procession started, leaving from the great fortress gates of the Peitang, the front rule walking at the end of a long cord to do the stearin, the driver, courier." and a little donkey made up the party. We wore about two hours getting clear of the purlieus and banlieues of Peking, Everything rather more primitive than at Shanghai, both as to votives and the streets, which are paved with cobble stones with great clefts and dips at intervals, all the way along. The first portion of the road took us along the dried-up bed of a wide river with high banks, the bottom like a shingly bank scattered with frequent boulders. I don't know where was the centre of gravity of our little, vehicle; the inequal ties of the way would lift one wheel at an angle of 45°, or may be 60°, for quite a stretch at a time, and she would never turn over. 'This was supposed to be the high road, and goes, they say, over the desert of Gobi, all' the way to Lake Baikal. We met thousand and thousands of pack mules and donkeys heavily laden, and for some way droves of the one-hump camels going to Peking and through to Manchuria, Wo made our first halt at 9 p.m. putting up at the village inn,- which has two courtyards, one on to which the rooms for travellers open, and the other for stabling. Your room has a stone flooring, and the bed is a shelf of hollow masonry, covered with matting, about ton or tivelve feet wide. A bamboo curtain hangs in front of the doorway. The second day we passed through the Nankou pass into the mountains. Two things struck me; one was that every paltry village—and we passed many of them—had a great fortified wall, and massive arched gateway, at either and as you come in and as you go out. The wall is constructed partly of stone or brick, but mostly of yellow mud, or caked, con-gulared dust, 'a huge, thick bank of it, very high, and very thick, with gun holes all along'tho top. This ugly, yellow dust, caked into iron-bound hardness, is blown by the winds over the Desort of Gobi all the way from Mongolia. You see great banks and hillsides of it all over the countryside, in fact, one may say that some of these hills are largely. formed of it. The other feature that specially aroused my reflections was the extreme barrenness of the hills and mountains. Thad just come from the terraced hills of Nagasaki, in bright weather a perfect dream of beauty, where "the valley already stood so thick with corn that trey for joy were singing." And here never a twig or a bush. It is said that for centuries this multitudinous population have cleared off every tree and forest growth, so that nothing can show itself that is not soon destroyed.
Our last stop but one was at a village of which the cure was a burly, ruddy Chinese Roman Catholic priest, who carried bravely the honours of his priesthood. Ho entertained me well, but the butter with which he liberally pasted his bread was very raucid; they told mo at La Trappe that ho had had it for yours. The Jast highway village, beyond which we had to proceed by mule, wis the parish of an excellent Lazarist French missionary of Breton origin. He gave me of his liqueurs, which he makes himself and cost him very little, and of his rum, which is sent to him. For the rest of his diet, ho is principally a vegetarian, He showed mo round the place; there was little to see, but his hill-side was better clothed than any we had come through. Ho told me that I should fud the situation of the monastery much more beautiful, and so indeed I found it. A day and a-half later, we got there, It is a favoured spot, the hills are very groom, and the valleys rich with verdant and luxuriant growth—flowers, almond trees, wild apricot trees, beeches, willows, poplars—a valley a furlong, to a quarter-mile wide, with some flat surface, covered with small, cultivate ed fields, and some steep windings lying between tivo hills, the sides of which are here and there broken by faces of slashed rock, and covered with a rough growth of bushes. To the right of the valley is a shallow stream, brawling over stones running all the way to the In spite of the apparent richness of these valleys, there is little or nothin; that cows can eat, and the monks foun themselves unable to keep them. They can therefore have neither milk, butter, nor cheese, their rule already prohibiting them the use of meat, fish, or eggs. Moreover, so poor is the soil, which thinly covers the rock, that no" garden fruits will grow, no strawberries, cherries, raspberries, gooseberries, or currants. Their apple trees bear every. two years. 'Thoie vines bear abundantly, and' they have a largo vineyard, but the wine is harsh, burning, and acid. They produce cabbages, haricot beans, poas, etc. and in every spare patch they geow salad, which woitid seem to be.their staple food.
The community-numbers sixty-fivo—fifty-five Chinese and ten Europeans, French, Belgians, and a German, The pioneer Europeans are all dosd. The four senior fathers, of course, ai nose. Their place consists of three large quadrangular gardens, the inner two of which are enclosed by their buildings, refectory, and dormitory on either side of the middle garden, chapel and cloisters enclosing three of the third, the nearly finished church forming the fourth side. These inner gardens are beautiful with rose bushes, lilies, geranlums, and spirma.
My return journey took mo by another route, "and gave mo a very different impression, I was riding upon an ass and there was another ass, a little one, a truculent tawny, chestnut, yellow-eyed Chinese pony, already responsible for the death of a young Chinese novice at the Mani tery, whom he violently threw to his destruction, and the two boys, It was the rich, gorgeous, summer time, when nature, in Milton's phrase, everywhere wears her most " gaudy trim." Wo loft from the opposite side to that.on which we had arrived; we began to ascond at once, climbing a very abrupt mountain Up and up, and up and up, and up and up, we mounted, till from the height' to which we had the hills below, which from alley screen these mountains from the view, became their visible footstools, There is one conspicuous mountain in that neighbourhood, said to have an elevation of 3,000 metres, or 9,000 feet. The higher we got, the denser was the bus! and woodland growth. After roaching our highest point, we had again to make a steep dosvont, and than passed through some woodland scenery, as fine as anything I have seen in Perthshire, or elsewhere in Scotland, or in Germany. 'The brilliant' green and the frequent streams, and their faces of precipitous rock, looming from' out the woodland growth, were all most pleasing to the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.