Gorgeous " Yamun" of Yeh's Father. 383 



licad-quarters were situated on a hillock commanding the city, 

 surrounded by the numerous buildings of a country-seat or 

 YamuUj which had been the property of the father of Governor 

 Yeh, who had acquired such notoriety during the recent warlike 

 troubles. The ostentatious splendour of the apartments, the 

 splendid ebony carved work, gave such an idea of the mag- 

 nificence, the luxury, the gorgeousness of the Chinese princes, 

 as can only be paralleled by what we read of the palaces of 

 the emperors of ancient Rome. Yeh himself had by this 

 time been removed from the political scene, and was a state 

 prisoner in Calcutta, where he lived] in more than monastic 

 seclusion. To judge by his portrait, which was for sale in 

 all the print-shops of Hong-kong, Yeh was a fine-looking 

 man with energetic features, and an expression full of in- 

 tellect, and, so far as his physical appearance went, seemed 

 to take after his father, who in his ninety-second year was 

 still tasting joys of paternity. In his own country, even 

 among the Europeans, Yeh enjoys the reputation of being not 

 only an able diplomatist, but a man of varied information as 

 well. While at Hong-kong we were shown some large 

 anatomical wood-cuts, which Yeh had himself borrowed from 

 a Euroj)ean work on anatomy, and published at his o\^ai 

 cost on an enlarged scale, accompanied by a preface fr'om 

 his pen.* 



Even more extensive and elegant in its outward aspect 

 than that of Yeh, was the palace of the Tartar general Pih- 



* Yell, a;i ii well known, has since died in imprisonment at Calcutta. 



