Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/253

Rh the French consulate. Nor must I omit to mention the hospitable members of the China Inland Mission.

Compared with the capital of Ssŭch'uan, Yün-nan Fu is a poor affair. Poverty is as conspicuous a feature of the one as is prosperity of the other. The walls are solid, and, as is not infrequently the case in Chinese cities, the most conspicuous feature of the city; but they enclose a space of no very great extent, and cannot be more than three miles in circumference. A few rusty cannon lay strewn about on their summit, upon one of which I deciphered the unlooked-for superscription I.H.S.—a relic bearing witness to the mechanical genius of some forgotten Jesuit father.

Outside the city walls stands an imposing pagoda, built somewhat prematurely by one Ts'en Yü-ying to celebrate prospective victories over France; but more interesting perhaps at the present day, and infinitely more surprising, is a neatly laid-out station, with railway embankments curling away across the plain,—a forerunner of the line which France is pushing forward with dogged determination from