Of the city itself it may be noted that it is magnificently laid out within high and massive walls, the gates and corners surmounted by bastions and imposing towers pierced with three tiers of gun-ports. The main streets are straight and extravagantly wide. Spaciousness is the dominant expression of the whole--the back-yard is a feature of the meanest one-storeyed hovels. It has not occurred to the Pekingese to economise earth-space by vertical architecture ground-ward or sky-ward. Viewed from an elevation, the city has the appearance of a vast park: the tree-foliage seen in perspective seems to cover the whole area, only picked out by yellow and green roofs of imperial and other conspicuous buildings. The palace, a city in itself of 10,000 inhabitants, occupies an immense _enclave_ symmetrically placed in the centre of the whole.
From such a coign of vantage as the high wall affords, Peking presents at once an impressive and a pleasing spectacle. It gives the distance necessary to lend enchantment to the view. The soothing hum of a great population; the sweetness of an atmosphere untainted, if it be summer, or spiced by the aromatic herbs which grow promiscuously between the interstices of the bricks, if it be autumn,--enfolds the scene in that kind of soft drapery which memory throws over common things long past. One lingers, loth to renew a closer acquaintance with the crowd below, which no longer hums but utters wild discordant cries,--with the horrors of the streets, which are of the earth, earthy. The area contained between the rectilinear arteries of the city is dismally laid out on the plan of the rabbit-warren. These wide streets are alternately deep mire and deep dust at the best, but at the worst, receptacles of indescribable abominations. The witty and wise Bishop Favier, when describing these to a friend in France, was asked, How could a population living in such insanitary conditions resist a visitation of cholera. "Cholera!" exclaimed the Father; "it could never enter. It would be asphyxiated at the gate!"[12]
The dust is acrid to nose and eyes, from the dessicated refuse of generations, for the streets are watered by long scoops from standing pools of sewage which overflow in the summer rains and obliterate the roadway, so that animals harnessed between shafts not unfrequently meet with a cruel death by drowning in these fœtid thoroughfares.