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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



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« One writer discovered 



-I that the beauty of Fifth 

 co Avenue lay in its skyline of 

 •£ magnificent cornices. The 

 ■- streets of Peking have 

 neither skyline nor cornices. 

 Were it not for the multi- 

 tudinous traffic upon them, 

 they would remind the trav- 

 eler of the sprawling, God- 

 forsaken streets of an 

 American mining town, in- 

 finitely extended. The trees 

 which line the central road- 

 ways are all of such recent 

 planting that this city of the 

 centuries suggests the latest 

 offspring of an energetic 

 real-estate agent. 



BUILDINGS THAT SHOUT 

 WITH BARBARIC COLOR 



As soon, however, as the 

 traveler enters a gateway, 

 through one of the gray or 

 dingy brick-red walls, he 

 comes suddenly and unex- 

 pectedly upon a palace, 

 silent in the sun, yet shout- 

 ing aloud in the barbaric 

 brilliance of its color — crim- 

 son columns, friezes of 

 flashing gold on green, 

 wide-flaring roofs of re- 

 splendent yellow, all above 

 a triple-terraced platform 

 of marble, white like snow. 

 Or it may be a many- 

 courted temple, where a 

 hundred lamas drone chants 

 before an inscrutable Bud- 

 dha ; or a wooded park, 

 where emperors once took 

 their pleasure, where cen- 

 tury-old cedars shade path- 

 ways and pleasant lakes. 

 Shrines nestle in mulberry 

 groves and hillocks are 

 crowned by Buddhist topes, 

 from whose marble bases 

 one looks out over the roofs 

 |> of the city — miles and miles, 

 m it seems, of gray roofs — and 

 £> in the center of all a great 

 splotch of imperial yellow. 

 Z the once "forbidden city," 

 £ where dwelt the emperor, 



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