but Manchus of pure descent from entering, it impresses the imagination with a sense of dignified repose, in truest keeping with its object.
In Mukden, too, and its neighbourhood there are many temples, but of the ordinary Chinese type, and of no special interest. In the matter of temples, indeed, the Chinese are singularly unsuccessful in inspiring interest. I did not see a single temple in China that really impressed me—not one to compare with those which may be seen all over India. With but very few exceptions, they are tawdry and even flimsy, and one never seems to meet with evidence of that immense amount of care and labour and thought in their construction, or of that sense of the beautiful, which characterizes the great temples of India. The wooden pillars, often plain, and the grotesquely painted walls which one mostly sees in China, are a poor substitute for the stately marble pillars and exquisite carvings of an Indian temple.
On May 29 our caravan was complete, and we left Mukden to travel eastward to the Yalu river, on the borders of Corea. We soon entered a hilly country, and the scenery became perfectly lovely—hillsides covered with woods of a thoroughly English type, oaks and elms such as we never see in India. The valleys were filled with thriving little villages and hamlets, and on the streams and rivers were glimpses of wonderful beauty. The quantity of flowers and ferns, too, was extraordinary. Mr. James was making a botanical collection, and in one day we found five different kinds of lily of the valley, maidenhair ferns of various forms—one especially lovely, in shape like a kind of spiral bowl — lilies, violets, anemones, and numbers of other English flowers. It was a perfect little country that we were in, and we revelled in the beauties about us.
One of the valleys we passed through was that . from which the founder of the Manchu dynasty had started on his career
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