Mr, Emil S. Fischer's Interesting.
Address A very interesting lecture, illu strated by lantern slides, was given yin the hall of the Royal Asiatic Society on September 26 by Emil S. Fischer before a gathering of members. chose as his subject "The Tung Ling, or Eastern Mausolea, as they looked before and after the Desecration." Mr. Isaac Mason presided, Mr, Fischer explained, in the course of his lecture, that Lieutenant-Colonel Debreuil, commanding officer of the 16th Regiment of thi French Colonial Infantry in Tientsi 1916, made a trip to the Tung Ling and wrote a book to which he attached a perspective of the Tombs, from which, with the interpretations, the well:
architect, Mr. J. A. Hammer schmidt, had drawn the fine picture which was shown on the screen. This showed all the mausolea of the Manchu Dynasty so far as the burial ground was concerned at the Tung Ling.
The burial ground, speaker, contained the ci outlay of the burial places of five of the Emperors of the Great Tsing Dynasty who ruled over the Chinese Empire from 1644 to 1912. These rulers were Shun-chih (1644-1662, who was buried in the Hsiao Ling); Kang-hsi (1662-1728, who was buried in the Tsing Ling)' Chien-Jung (1736-1796, who was buried in the Vu Ling), Hsien-fung (1851-1862, who was buried in the Ting Ling), and Tung-chih (1862-1875, who was buried in the Hui Ling), The other rulers during the period, including Yung-cheng (1723- 1786), Chia-ching (1796-1821), Tao-Kuang (1821-1851) and Kuang-hsu (1875-1908), were buried in the Hsi Ling, or Western Tombs, Wonderful Monuments of Culture The speaker said that all these wonderful "culture" monuments for ithe Emperors were, so far as these buildings were concerned, covered with yellow glazed tiles. In addition to the burial places for the Em-perers in the Tung Ling, there were also gorgeous Chinese architectural constructions made for the two Empresses of the Emperor Hsien-fung, and these also were covered with yellow glazed tiles. These two Em-Dresses were buried in two directly adjoining but separate enclosures, one of which was called the Tung Tai Ho Ling with the burial place of the Empress of Hsien-fang, who died 84 years ago, while the second was called the Hsi Tai Ho Ling' where the last Empress Dowager, Place of sepulture; 'Apart from these yellow tiled fevered individual. citadel-like closures, there were next to the 'Emperors' tombs additional enclosures where the roofs were in green glazed tiles and there the tumuli were of a special and differ~ ent kind to the-enormous catacomb. like graves for the Emperors and Empresses. In these green-tiled for instance in the Vu were buried the numerous kuei-fei, or concubines (89 in all), of the Emperor Chien-lung. The Ching Fei-ling contained over 30 tumuli of the consorts of the Emperor Kanghsi, The distance from Peking to the Tung: Ling over uncomfortable Chinese roads was over 100 English miles and it was a similar distance }from the southwest of Peking to the Hsi Ling (Western Tombs), but here the traveller had the comfort Jof the Peking-Hankow Railway to Kao Pei-tien, from where a side line ran to the Liangkuochang, The lantern slides with which Mr. Fischer profusely illustrated Hecture, many of which were Jereat beauty, showed in detail the magnificence of the Tung Ling before their desecration and exactly how they had been despoiled by the vandals. Beautiful pillars had had their golden decorations torn off, Foofs were wrecked, walls had been pulled down and tumuli were burst open. Mr. Fischer said there was }no doubt that the men who were responsible for the outrage were regular soldiers of a section of one fof the divisions of the 8th Army Corps. In three cases, even the coffins tad been foreed open so the pearls and might be stripped from the magnificent robes of the dead emperors, some of which the eaker had seen in the Imperial Palaces in Mukden, through the courtesy of Mr. Tong Shao-yi, who was Governor at the time,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.