Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/49

 China was one of the highest public utility. It was none other than the construction of a magnificent highway, reaching from the city of Chiu-yuen, not far from the modern capital, to Yün-yang; a distance of eighteen hundred li, or six hundred English miles. This great work involved no little engineering skill, for there were valleys to be filled up, rivers to be crossed, mountains to be pierced, and marshes to be drained; and, what was worse, the literati began to express opinions of the Emperor and his undertakings unfavourable to his general policy. Of these two classes of obstacles, however,—the physical and the moral—he ignored the one and overcame the other; but not until many years had passed away, and an enormous number of men had spent their energies in accomplishing the task. Yet this was but the commencement of his constructive mania. He now addressed himself to the building of innumerable palaces, the plans, extent, and general description of which were extraordinary in the extreme. His original reason for this was that the capital was fast becoming too populous, and he longed for a quieter abode; so he first decided to build a new palace for himself in the Imperial Forest Park, where he could retire and live at ease. An idea of the magnitude of this suburban retreat may be formed from the fact that its main entrance or front gate was on the peak of a mountain, many tens of li to the south, from which stretched three great pathways leading to the palace; while the front hall of the residence itself was five hundred paces from east to west and fifty from north to south. These dimensions, however, are difficult to reconcile with the statement that the upper storey was spacious enough to accommodate more than ten thousand persons;