the house by a hooting, yelling crowd. A Chinaman has no regard for privacy, and these men showed considerable annoyance because we would not let them into our private room, and allow them to stare at us, examine everything we possessed, feel our clothes to see what sort of cloth they were made of, and question us unendingly about our ages, where we had come from, how long we meant to stay, and where we were going. Even when we had cleared our room, they did not desist from pestering us, but, while we were undressing, poked holes with their fingers in the paper windows of our room, and then applied their eyes to these easily made peep-holes. Looking up in the middle of our ablutions, we would see a mass of eyes—just the eyes, with nothing else visible—peering at us. The effect was peculiarly irritating, and we would dash out with furious remonstrance ; but as soon as we were inside again they would come back exactly as before, and we had eventually to resign ourselves to the inevitable.
But these are the ordinary experiences of every traveller in China, and I am only repeating what has been described a hundred times before. We were kept a week at Mukden, making up a caravan of mules to take us into the mountains. We accordingly had time to see the sights of the place, and go some excursions in the neighbourhood. Of these the most interesting was to the tomb of Nurhachu, the founder of the present dynasty. These Manchus have high ideas as to the fitting resting-places for their great men, and there are few more impressive tombs than this of the simple mountain chief who raised his clan from perfect obscurity to be the rulers of the most populous empire the world has ever seen. Situated in the country, away from the din of city life, in the midst of a park of sombre cypresses and pines many miles in extent, and surrounded by a wall, at the massive gateway of which guards are placed to prevent any
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