i6i wiTH BOAT A^ii GUN iN TfaE "^ANGfZfi VALLEY. 



admire the skill of the master hand which drew the lines. 6o feet in diameter at the base, it 

 tapers to 45 feet on the upper floor; each story slightly lower as you ascend, each door 

 smaller, each verandah narrower. The walls are octagonal, one wall within and one 

 without, or a pagoda within a pagoda, each wall lO feet thick and the stairway between. 

 Each verandah has eight doors and the cross passages are full of light. In the afternoon 

 sunlight the Great Lake is a brilliant mirror, and the view of the hills and distant cities, the 

 silvery canals and crystal lakes, the busy market towns and hamlets embowered in green, 

 is superb. Philanthropist reflects, — there are five million people within the range of the eye. 



The centre of religious worship in the Kiangsu province is the U5n Miao Kwan, or 

 the City Temple. As there are fourteen temples within the sacred precincts it is a city of 

 the gods. Among these are the 36 ministers of Heaven, 56 star deities, 72 doctors and 60 

 cycle gods. From the heads of the latter, Minerva-like, jump out cocks, squirrels and 

 monkeys, rats and snakes, the priests considering the Godhead like unto "corruptible 

 beasts and creeping things." On the third floor of the chief temple, whose roof is 

 ornamented with dragons sits the Pearly Emperor, the ruler of gods and men ; while the 

 gilded throne, the handsome shrines, the ornate decorations and the rows of gods are such 

 as to impress the heathen imagination with ideas of majesty. 



Around the Temple of the Three Pure Ones is the famous picture gallery of the city, 

 with pictures of gods and goddesses, mountains and trees, gardens and flowers, ladies and 

 children, " fine specimens of decorative art " as a young American artist pronounces them 

 to be. 



The City Temple is a "Vanity Fair," for it is the central rendezvous of pleasure- 

 seekers. Beggars, thieves and pick-pockets are a marked feature of the assembly that 

 convenes here. There are Punch-and-Judy, peep-shows, puppet-shows, bear-shows and 

 rope-dancers, jugglers and sleight-of-hand performers. Along the south side of the city 

 alone there are 50 temples and nunneries, and the whole number within the walls is several 

 hundred. The " bonzes " number five or six thousand and Taoist priests are legion ; so there 

 are abundant opportunities for pagan worship. 



There are four noted gardens in Soochow, some of them said to have cost two or 

 three hundred thousand dollars. The charge for entrance is five cents. The Chinese 

 landscape-gardeners provide a surprising diversity within a limited space. There is the 

 lake with its winding bridges, the blooming lotus, the gold-fish playing "hide and seek," 

 the rockeries with their labyrinthine caves, the pavilions capping their summits, the 

 handsome tea-houses, the meandering galleries, the hundred roses and blossoming trees of 

 the "Flowery Kingdom" and all that the Chinese can devise to delight the eye and please 

 the taste. 



The glory of "Beautiful Soo" is her literature. The city was founded during the 

 latter years of Confucius, "the throneless king," and though his foot never trod these streets 

 yet he made Soochow his literary capital, the centre of his domain of letters : and so, for 

 twenty centuries, to the four hundred millions she has been what Athens was to the 

 Grecians. Proud scholars have crowded the examination halls, authors have filled the 

 shelves of the book-stores and poets have sung of the old landmarks. Oftener than of any 

 other city has the first literary graduate of the Empire — " a flower that blooms but once 



