1254 
THROUGH ASIA 
villages, ^ fresh temples, fresh gardens kept continually 
coming into view, and we were constantly losing our way 
in the long crooked lanes. For more than a thousand days 
I had been travelling through Asia; but that last day 
seemed to me longer than all the preceding days put 
together. At last at last I caught a g-limpse of some- 
thing between two groups of trees looking out grey in the 
distance. I eking ! cried my serv^ant. He was right. 
It was the great city wall of Peking — -the goal and object 
of my long journey across Asia ! 
The feelings with which I rode in through the southern 
gate of the city were such as my pen refuses to describe. 
P oi ovei an hour my mules trotted along" the stone-paved 
road which runs round the western and southern sides of 
Peh-jin-ching or the ^Northern Capital, skirting the city 
walls. Grey and of imposing strength, they reached the 
height of over forty feet, and compassed the city about 
four-square. But at length we entered the Chinese town, 
and approached the “Gate of Heaven,’’ with its massive 
square projecting tow'er, and long tunnelled archway, 
through which a swarm of people, carriages, and animals 
were going backwards and forwards like ants in an ant- 
hill. 
It was only a short distance from the “Gate of Heaven ” 
to the street of the European Ambassadors, in which I 
knew there w'as a French hotel. Owing to the long 
journey, my clothes showed terrible signs of wear, and 
my outer man was altogether so unkeinpt, that I thought 
it would be wiser to stay in the hotel tncognito for a few 
days, until I got myself made presentable. But my 
palanquin had not advanced very far down the street of 
the ambassadors, w'hen my eye fell upon a large white- 
washed gateway, outside w'hich stood a couple of Cossack 
sentries. I called to them, asking whose house that was. 
They told me, it was the Russian legation. These words 
had such an effect upon my ears that I instantly jumped 
out of the palanquin and w'ent in. At that moment I 
cared not one jot about my appearance, and that the 
Cossacks were incomparably better dressed than I was. 
