wooden stage raised some eight feet above the ground. As we ascended it we noticed with amusement that the walls of what may be called a sort of greenroom, bore cleverly executed drawings in charcoal of Europeans.
The temple itself, approached through a third colonnaded court, is an imposing hall, lavishly decorated outside with boards blazing forth auspicious inscriptions in scarlet and gold. But it is in the inside of the hall that we had occasion to admire the generosity and good sense of those who raised this monument. The whole of the side walls, right and left, are covered with series of large paintings representing in sequence the victorious career as well as the administrative activity and private life of Liu-Kin-tang. There are quaint but graphic pictures of the battles and sieges by which he reduced the rebellious province. The characteristic features of the Andijanis who played the leading part in the revolt, and of the dark-skinned Tartar people of Urninchi and other centres to the east, are reproduced with striking fidelity. We see the general sitting in court, punishing malefactors, and in all the chief functions of a provincial governor. Other pictures show laina returning to his ancestral home, his meeting with his aged mother, &c. It is a remarkable cycle of illustrations of a great career, and when properly reproduced, it would be no mean acquisition for an Ethnographic Museum in Europe. The richly gilt altar or central fane contains curiously enough a very Western souvenir of the Chinese general, his portrait in the form of a photograph enlarged to life size.
I could find no representation of any Chinese deity sharing the honours of the place with the departed hero. But on the parts of the main wall not occupied by the altar, two large representations of mythological animals attracted attention. To the right is a remarkably spirited picture of a storm-producing dragon, drawn with a verve and power of imagination which betoken no mean artist. As I looked at the wonderful masses of cloud propelled by the dragon's blast, I thought of
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