THE DEER OF THE PEKING PARKS 
OcToBER 12th, 1860, will always be memorable as the date 
of the burning of the Imperial “Summer Palace” in the 
Yuangming Yuan, the wonderful pleasaunce situated to the 
north-west of Peking. The Yuangming, which at the time 
had apparently been unvisited by Europeans, occupies an 
area of many hundred acres, and is in fact a park diversified 
with lakes, and containing a collection of buildings of 
immense extent, among which was the Summer Palace. 
The most beautiful part is the forest clothing the flanks of 
the Hiang-chan hills, which attain a height of a thousand 
feet, and from which may be viewed at the foot the ex- 
tensive lake, and in the far distance the walls of Peking 
enveloped in a smoky haze. Dotted through the gardens 
were temples, lodges, and pagodas, groves, grottos, lakes, 
bridges, terraces, and artificial hills. “It certainly was,” 
writes a spectator, ““one of the most beautiful scenes I 
had ever beheld.” In the Summer Palace were gathered 
together all the treasures and curiosities accumulated by 
the reigning dynasties of China during untold centuries. 
All these perished in the conflagration, which lasted two 
days. Whether this burning of the palace, which was 
ordered by Lord Elgin as a punishment for the atrocities 
inflicted by the Chinese on British subjects, was justifiable, 
it is not our province to inquire. Mr. Justin McCarthy, in 
his ‘History of Our Own Times,” considers that it was. 
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