on the plain looking lofty, massive and delightfully refreshing
to the eye after our hot and dusty journeying. The city has a
population of about 25,000 and its numerous trees look so invitingly
green that the traveller is eager to enter.

But in this case also, distance lent enchantment, for within,
while there was not the filth of a Korean village, yet the narrow
streets were far from clean. Not a blade of grass relieved the
bare, dusty ground trampled by many feet, while the low, mud-
plastered houses were not inviting. A Chinese seldom thinks
of making repairs. He builds once, usually with rough stone
plastered with mud or with sun-dried brick. The roof is
thatched and the floor is the beaten earth, although in the
better houses it is stone or brick. In time, the mud-plaster
or, if the walls are of sun-dried brick, the wall itself begins to
disintegrate. But it is let alone, as long as it does not make
the house uninhabitable, while paint is unknown. So the general
appearance of a Chinese town is squalid and tumbledown.
Even the yamen of a district magistrate presents
crumbling walls, unkempt courtyards, rickety buildings and
paper-covered windows full of holes. The palaces of the rich
are often expensive, but the Asiatic has little of our ideas of
comfort and order.

The Rev. J. P. Bruce and Mr. R. C. Forsyth, of the English
Baptist mission, the only members of the station who were
present, gave us a hearty welcome. The green shrubbery,
the bath-tub, the dinner of roast beef and the clean bedroom,
were like a bit of hospitable old England set down in China.
None of the buildings here were injured by the Boxers. But