Page:Through China with a camera.pdf/367

 rice, an omelette, grapes and tea. The room had recently been used as a stable ; and its window filled in with a small wooden frame and originally covered with paper, was now festooned with dusty spiders'-webs. Another long detour at length brought us to the Chi-ho gate of the Tartar city.

Before we enter I will run over some of the more general characteristics of the city at which we have now arrived. It stands, as we have already seen, on a plain sloping down to the sea, and is indeed made up of two towns — a Tartar or Manchu quarter, and a Chinese settlement — joined together by a wall more than twenty miles round. At the time of the Manchu conquest these two divisions were parted from each other by a second, inner wall; the true natives of the soil, at least those of them supposed to be friendly to the new dynasty, being confined within a narrow space to the south; while the Tartar army was encamped around the Imperial palace in the northern city, which covers a square space of double the area of the Chinese town.

In so far as the features 1 have just described are concerned, Peking is the same to-day as it was over 200 years ago, when the descendants of Kublai Khan mounted the Imperial throne. There are still in the Tartar city the same high walls pierced with nine double gateways; the same towers and moats and fortified positions; and within, the palace is still surrounded by the permanent Manchu garrison, like that which was established in most of the provincial capitals of China.

The army was originally divided into four corps, distinguished by the white, red, yellow and blue banners under which they respectively fought. Four bordered banners of the same colours were subsequently added, and eight corps of Mongols and an equal number of Chinese adherents were created at a later date. Each corps of Manchu bannermen possesses, or rather is sup-