as the fact that the English missionary Belcher, who has spent 15 years here, has not seen this curiosity.
The Manchurian fortress stands a couple of miles NE of' the town, separated from it by the dry, gravelly bed of the Tangtiapa ho. In the spring it becomes a large river, though only for a short time. The commandant of the fortress politely replied to the card I had sent him, as well as the other mandarins, by making a personal call the day after my arrival. At his invitation I was present on the following day at some military manoeuvres improvised in my honour. At the appointed time we arrived at the Manchurian fortress, scarcely 2/3 of a square mile in size. A guard of honour of half=a-dozen men was drawn up just behind the entrance gate in front of a kind of guard-house. The men were short and had no military bearing. They took a good deal of trouble to present arms, so that the foreigners should be impressed. The narrow main street is intersected on the way to the middle of the fortress, i.e., a ride of about 5 minutes on horseback by no less than 4 very narrow lanes. At each corner there were two sentinel boxes with.a sentinel each in my honour, armed with rifles with cocks, which were to be presented.
The Tutung Jy met us in full dress and soon after our arrival an old officer with a blue button requested him with a »tching darin» to proceed to the parade-ground. We mounted our horses. The Jy darin rode a powerful little grey animal that was led by his men at such a pace that his tchinping, preceding him in two lines, had to advance at the double. There were more sentry-boxes, guards, salutes etc. at every corner. The parade-ground occupied the NE corner of the fortress. A pretty pagoda, with its back to the E wall, was decorated with proverbs and verses in gilt characters on a blue and red ground. 50o men were drawn up in two lines, occupying one side of the parade-ground from the entrance gate to the pagoda. The officers stood in front of the front line. Heralded by monotonous trumpet blowing and shouldering of arms by the rather distant troops, the Tutung rode up to the pagoda, where his first anxiety was to provide me and himself with tea. We took our seats in a couple of red-upholstered armchairs far inside the pagoda, surrounded
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