forbidden except for princes and ministers of state.

In the busy streets of trade the scene is most animated. Thousands of
scarlet signs with gilded inscriptions hang from oblique poles raised
in front of the shops. Carts, palanquins, mules, camels, coolies,
soldiers and merchants throng the streets, while to add to the
confusion myriads of children play about your legs, and the old men
carrying their kites toward the walls add to the singularity of the
scene. The kites, representing dragons, eagles, etc., are managed
with a dexterity which comes only from a lifelong practice. They are
sometimes furnished with various aeolian attachments which imitate
the songs of birds or the voices of men. The pigeons also in Pekin are
frequently provided with a very light kind of aeolian harp, which is
secured tightly to the two central feathers of their tails, so that
in flying through the air the harps sound harmoniously. This curious,
indistinct note had excited the count's attention, and he learned its
cause from a pigeon which fell dead at his feet, having in its flight
struck itself against the cord of one of the kites. Their use was
explained by the natives as a protection against the hawks which are
very common in Pekin.

Passing one day the place of execution, the travelers were shocked to
see that the heads of the executed were exposed to the public gaze,
labeled with the crimes for which they had suffered. Such sights as
this, with the terrible filth of all the Chinese cities, the squalid
suffering of the poor and the want of sympathy with indigence and
disease, suggested to the count, as they too frequently suggest to
European visitors, that the degradation of the Chinese is hopeless.
Yet such sights were common a few generations ago in every European
capital, and the same causes which have led to their cessation there