Page:Peking the Beautiful.pdf/102

 At the Kuan Hsiang T'ai

7 ISTORIC Peking enjoys the honored distinction of sheltering within its gray walls the oldest observatory of which the world has any record; for inside the compound walls of the Kuan Hsiang T'ai, on the eastern wall, we find huge bronze instruments which are said AM to have been executed by Persian astronomers back in the days W of the Great Khan (A.D. 1280). The older instruments have long since been replaced by the more accurate and larger models designed by Father Verbiest in the latter part of the seventeenth century. These more recent and marvelously decorated instruments still surmount the broad terrace above the ramparts, while the antiquated Mongol instruments, which served for so many centuries, now occupy a more humble position and serve to decorate the pretty courtyard below. Among the beautiful group of dragon-wreathed instruments above the wall, there are two quite different from the rest, European in design and decoration. They are undoubtedly the two which were brought over to China from France as a present from Louis XIV to the Emperor K'ang Hsi. The more noteworthy and striking of these is the huge Celestial Globe shown in the opposite plate, which occupies a central position on the upper observatory platform. In the background, portions of the famous Chinese castings can be seen. Father De Comte in his Memoirs describes these in the following words: “They are large, well-cast, omamented all over with figures of dragons, very well fitted for the use it is intended to make of them; and if the fineness of the divisions were in keeping with the rest of the work, and if, instead of sights, lenses had been fitted into them, according to the new method of the Royal Academy, we should have nothing in this direction which could be compared with them." The group comprise "an amillary zodiac, an equinoctial sphere, an azimuthal horizon, a large quarter circle, a sextant, and a celestial globe." A number of these wonderful works of art were among the loot gathered by the kaiser after the terrible days of 1800, and carried off to grace the terrace of the Orangerie at Potsdam. At the close of the World War, according to one of the stipulations of the Peace Treaty between Germany and the Allied Powers, Derbiest's masterpieces were returned to their time honored place upon the eastern wall Although these instruments stand unsheltered under the open sky, and have stood thus for centuries-buffeted by snow and wind and rain, -- they are as perfect and as beautiful as though cast but yesterday; and this venerable old observatory still continues to be one of the most fascinating of the many famous monuments of the capital. (See paqe 28.)