Behind the scenes in Peking, being experiences during the siege of the legations

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Stifuca, SJjtti fork

CHARLES WILLIAM WASON

COLLECTION

CHINA AND THE CHINESE

THE GIFT OF

CHARLES WILLIAM WASON

CLASS OF 1876

191B

Cornell University Library
DS 772.H78

The original of this bool< is in
the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023151131

BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

SIR ROBERT HART

Frontispiece

BEHIND THE SCENES
IN PEKING

BEING EXPERIENCES DURING THE
SIEGE OF THE LEGATIONS

BY MARY HOOKER

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W,

1910

PREFACE

It does not fall to the lot of every woman — or
man, either — to go through a siege, especially one
so remarkable, and, indeed, unique in many of its
features, as that of the Legations in Peking.

The feeling that my experiences were out of
the common, and present new aspects of famous
events, during which I was, to a certain extent,
at the same time on the stage and behind the
scenes, has induced me to publish the following
pages. They are taken from letters, owing to
circumstances never sent, and my diary, written
spasmodically throughout the siege. While trying
to introduce something of the lighter side of life,
and speaking of various incidents, humorous and
otherwise, I have endeavoured to avoid all that
can give offence or displeasure to those mentioned.

vi PREFACE

If in any case I have unwittingly failed in this en-
deavour, I crave pardon.

My thanks are due to Mrs. Woodward for
giving permission to reproduce her unique siege

photographs.

MARY HOOKER.

September, 191O.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

TO FACE PAGE

SIR ROBERT HART .... frontispiece

WHITE PAGODA IN THE TEMPLE OF LINGUA SU - -2

HERBERT SaUIERS .....

RUSSIAN MARINE GUARD ' ' ' ]

CAPTAIN MOCALLA COMMANDING THE AMERICAN MARINEsJ
CH'iEN men GATE .....

BARON VON KETTELER . - . . -

BARRICADE BETWEEN THE AMERICAN AND RUSSIAN^

LEGATIONS
READING THE SENTENCE OF DEATH TO THE BOXERS

CAUGHT IN THE RUSSIAN LEGATION
THE TS0NG-LI YAMEN -

BARRICADE ACROSS THE CANAL TO THE FU
SANDBAG BARRICADE IN AMERICAN LEGATION
MRS. R. S. HOOKER
CAPTAIN JOHN T. MYERS
MRS. SaUIERS . . -

LOADING THE "INTERNATIONAL" - - ^

AMERICAN AND RUSSIAN MARINES AT WORK ON THE

BARRICADE. BARON VON llAHDEN ON THE RIGHT
SIR CLAUDE MACDONALD
EDWIN H. CONGER

vii

14
16

24
26

30

50

68
100
110

116

120
136

viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

TO FACE PAGE

A GATE INTO THE IMPERIAI, CITY 154

GENERAL A. E. CHAFFEE - 160

GENERAL SIR ALFRED GASELEE 176

THE RESULT OF THE SIEGE : IN THE AMERICAN MINISTER'S \

HOUSE ... - L 192

THE RESULT OF THE SIEGE : FRENCH LEGATION RUINS I
MRS. HOOKER, MISS ARMSTRONG, LADY MACDONALD's
LITTLE GIRLS, FARGO SftUIERS, AND COLONEL ARTHUR
CHURCHILL - 196

COAL HILL - 202

Map of Peking to face page 1

THE FORBIDDEN
(PURPLE) CITY

H
o

Pei-t'ang
Cathedral

Belgian
Legation) |

Tsung If Yamenl

R

I I L_

Scale of Yards

600

Chinese Fmai Line

xxxxyKxxxx Defenders' Fina.1 Line

To face paii,e i

BEHIND THE SCENES IN
PEKING

May 26, 1900.

When you were in Peking last year I don't know
whether you got out to the hills or not. They
are about fifteen miles from the imperial city, and
are the nearest point where foreigners can find
relief from the insufferable heat of the capital,
which begins with an intensely hot spring, con-
tinuing through a long, damp, sizzling summer.

Many of the diplomats have cottages and
bungalows at Pei-ta-ho, on the seashore, but its
distance from Peking is a great drawback to it as
a summer residence, and they have been forced to
accept the hills, as a nearer and more practical
place for their summer colony.

A large, commodious house has been built here
for the British Minister, as well as one for the
officials of the Customs, both within their respective
compounds. The greater part of this colony, how-

2 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

ever, have simply leased temples from Buddhist
priests, and converted them into the most attrac-
tive and livable summer homes, the American
and Russian Legations being the principal of
these.

A huge, white pagoda, belonging to the temple
of Linqua Su, in the centre of this district, with
its temples of Buddha and houses of its priests
surrounding it, is perched on the top of a hill at
the base of Mount Bruce, and for miles around
is the most picturesque feature of the landscape.
In the highest point of this pagoda is hung a
wonderful bell, the only motive-power of which
is the wind, and which was placed there by the
Chinese to frighten the evil spirits of the air.
When the breeze is strong, which is often the
case, the bell seems to thresh itself into a veri-
table fury, and again at midday, when the breeze
is light, one can just distinguish the faintest
tinkle.

High up in these hills, and built on the sides
of Mount Bruce, stand these temples with their
subordinate and associated buildings, each making
up a separate community. Ours is some-what
above the temple of Linqua Su, with its white

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OUR TEMPLE HOME 3

pagoda, and is built on a most wonderful natural
shelf of the mountain-side. A terrace, edged
by a low, ivy-covered parapet, runs the length
of our temple home, from which we look right
out on the world beneath us, down the valley
towards Peking ; or, if we look above us, it is to
see Mount Bruce rise perpendicularly against the
sky. Ancient and big are the stones that pave
the outer and inner courts of this temple, and
as picturesque as they are difficult to use are the
stone steps, formed of heavy and irregular slabs,
which lead down to the valley or ascend up unto
the mountain, from which steps finally emerge
innumerable tracks, leading in their turn to shrines,
homes of hermits, and temples built on this con-
tinuous ridge. Nor is this barbaric and ancient
setting for a modern life made less extraordinary
by the fact that one is served by quiet, intelli-
gent, besatined servants, who glide about and
look as if they had stepped into life straight from
the half-fabulous days of Kubla Khan; and you
feel they have always been thus, and always will
be, and you wonder how it is that although the
spirit of the twentieth century is certainly felt in
China, it is little seen.

4 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

May 27.

To-day we started off on a long tramp, making
first the ascent of Mount Bruce, which was so
difficult at times that we could scarcely accomplish
it, and had we not had the help of a young house-
servant, known to us as " Number Three Boy," I
doubt if we could have reached, the summit. The
wind whistled round the high peaks of Mount
Bruce to such an extent that Mrs. Squiers and I
had to hold on to each other to keep from being
blown off our feet.

From here we could see the Empress Dowager's
summer palace and grounds, spread out below us
like a toy garden, with its wonderful landscape
effects and its series of artificial water-ways.
Then, perched high up on a mountain, we could
see a white temple belonging to the eunuchs of
the palace, and reserved solely for their use
during the summer months ; and to the west the
Feng-tai station of the Peking-Paoting-fu Railway,
winding through the valleys below us like a
piece of grey thread. We then walked through
the enclosure of the temple occupied by the
Bussian Legation, and in passing through a half
shrine, half summer-house, most unexpectedly

CHINESE SHEPHERDS 5

came to a wall upon which was drawn a rough
but cleverly executed head of a lovely young
girl. It was done in coloured pastels, and had
been drawn by some artist diplomat. The sub-
ject was the Countess Marguerite Cassini, niece
of the Russian Minister, who had been stationed
in Peking some years previous. It was a beautiful
bit of work, and was especially startling when seen
surrounded by the hideous, grinning faces of
Buddhist gods.

Heading for our own temple of Linqua Su, we
walked miles, keeping to the top of a ridge, where
the views were gorgeous and the air wonderful,
and quite suddenly came upon a shepherd and his
flock. Fancy it, a Chinese shepherd tending his
Chinese sheep ! His expression was gentler and
happier by far than that of men leading a like
monotonous existence in the mountains of Switzer-
land or elsewhere in the West. Could it be that
there the shepherd longs to return to the life in
the villages, while here the life of the poorest
classes in the village communities is so hopeless a
struggle that individual members are glad to leave
the hopelessness of it and tend their flocks alone
upon the mountains ? This fascinating China I you

6 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

have been here, and you know it. I must not
bore you with my impressions, for if I attempted
such a thing these letters to you would assume
the proportions of an eneyclopasdia.

M.ay 27 (continued).

Mr. Squiers returned to the American Legation
this morning. He only gets out to the hUls twice a
week in time to dine and returns to Peking the fol-
lowing morning. He teUs us that the Boxers daily
become more daring, but the diplomats and people
in general put these things down to the usual
spring riots which yearly seize Peking, and are due
to hunger and disease, prevalent among the poorer
classes after a long, hard winter. Nevertheless,
it was deemed wise to inform the Tsung-li Yamen
(the Foreign Office) that we were in the hills at
the temple of Linqua Su, and would expect
official protection from all rioters or malcontents
who might be in this region, and a guard of
twelve Chinese soldiers was promptly detailed to
protect "nos personnes et nos biens." But such
soldiers I — opera-bouffis mannikins in a Broadway
theatre would frighten one with their martial air
compared to these ridiculous apologies for soldiers,

BOXERS AND THEIR MOTTO 7

which were sent to us for our protection, their
only weapons being dull-pointed rusty spears !

Clara, the German governess, returned from
Peking to-day, where she had gone to do some
shopping, and tells us that all the natives she
passed seemed to be armed, and that in all the
temple enclosures companies of Chinese were being
drilled.

Our servants, mostly native Christians, assure
us that these people are all Boxers, most of them
flaunting the red sash, the insignia of that Society,
and that they are preparing for a general uprising
when the time shall be ripe — an uprising that has
for its watchword, " Death and destruction to the
foreigner and all his works, and loyal support to
the great Ching dynasty,"

May 28.

The peace that settles on one after a long tramp
in the mountains was rudely broken up for us a
short while after our return from our walk yester-
day, when we found ourselves thrown into the
midst of a most exciting situation, from which we
knew the chances were about even whether we
should escape with our lives.

We could see from our mountain balcony that

8 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

the railroad station at Feng-tai, with its foreign
settlement, was burning. The immense steel
bridge was gone, too, showing that dynamite and
high explosives had been used to destroy it. The
locality was thick with smoke and the flames sky-
high. Our servants told us our highly picturesque
guard of twelve had run away as soon as they
were sure the Boxers were burning Feng-tai, for,
they argued, the mob will surely sack this foreign-
devil temple when they finish with Feng-tai. Since
they had begun, they certainly would not desist
until everything foreign this side of Peking was
sacked and burned, and this guard had no desire
to pose as the guardians of foreigners, but thought
it much safer to join the so far victorious rabble
at Feng-tai. We also learned that over a hundred
men engaged in agricultural and other peaceful
occupations in and around the temples, of which
ours was one, had left during the day to join the
Boxers.

Our position now, to say the least, was critical.
Not a foreign man on the place to protect us ; a
quantity of badly frightened Chinese servants to
reassure ; three children, their governesses and
ourselves, to make plans for. We did what women

DR. MORRISON TO THE RESCUE 9

always have to do — we waited ; and our reward came
when we saw down in the valley a dusty figure
ambling along on a dusty Chinese pony, coming
from the direction of Feng-tai and making direct
for our temple. It was Dr. Morrison, correspondent
of the London Times, and an intimate friend of the
Squierses.

On hearing early in the day of the mob at Feng-
tai, and the burning of the place, he promptly
started off in that direction to get as near as possible
to the scene of action, and ascertain for himself if
the wild rumours circulating in Peking were truths
before cabling them to London. Finding the
worst corroborated by what he saw from a point
near the mob, yet unseen by it, he started on his
return trip to Peking, hot haste for the cable office,
when he became oppressed with the starthng
remembrance that we were at the temple, and
probably alone and unprotected. So, instead of
returning to Peking, he promptly came to us.
He feared lest Mr. Squiers had not heard of the
burning of Feng-tai, or, if he had heard of it, that
possibly the city gates might be closed against the
approaching mob, and he might be unable to leave
the capital that night. The fact that our temple

10 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

was directly on the line of march to Peking for the
rioters made it look to Dr. Morrison as a most
probable possibility that they would stop chcz nous
before proceeding to the capital. In case of such
horrible eventuality he hoped to defend us for a
while, and to send to glory as many Chinese as
possible before turning up his own toes !

He was studying a possible defence of our balcony-
home when Mr. Squiers arrived post-haste, bring-
ing with him a Russian Cossack, whom he had
borrowed from the Russian Minister. Plans were
now made to defend the place from attack or
incendiaries during the night. The Chinese servants
worked with a wiU — our successful defence meant
safety for us and hfe for them. Sentry work of
the most careful sort continued all night, as weU as
the packing up of our clothes and valuables.

At 6 a.m. we were en route for Peking — an
enormous caravan — most of us in Chinese carts,
some riding ponies, mules, or donkeys, the forty
servants placing themselves wherever they could —
anywhere, in fact — so that they should not be left
behind. The three protectors, heavily armed, rode
by us, and three or four of the Chinese were armed
also, and the carts held such a position in the

BACK TO PEKING 11

caravan that in a moment they could be swung
round as a defence in case of an attack.

The fifteen miles through which we travelled
were utterly deserted except for the long, lonely
lines of coal-carrying dromedaries. It seemed as if
the country people en masse had deserted their
villages and gone to some rallying-point for a
demonstration ; and how anxiously and slowly each
half-hour of the trip passed, for, while it brought
us nearer to our Legation, it also brought us
nearer to the possibihty that our caravan would
run into yesterday's rioters with added numbers of
to-day's malcontents.

At 10.30 we reached the American Legation
compound, and most painfuUy but thankfully we
untwisted ourselves from the awfiil position we
were forced to take in the cart, and joyously grasped
the hands of friends. WilKam Pethick, Li Hung
Chang's private secretary for twenty years, a person
of tremendous influence with the Chinese, was in
the compound, and was on the point of going tc
the War Office to demand a regiment to go
with him to our rescue out in the hills. He had
feared for us desperately during the night following
the burning of Feng-tai.

12 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

May 30.

The times have become so dangerous that no
women are allowed to leave the compound, but, of
course, the diplomats and the military — such as
are here — must move about and try to find out
what the situation really is. The people who know
the most about it are the most pessimistic as to
what may happen before the marines arrive from
Tien-tsin.

We were glad to hear that the Belgian officials
at the Feng-tai station had heard of the inten-
tions of the Chinese to burn them and the place,
and had escaped to Peking without loss of hfe.

All the Legations that have battleships at Taku
wired some days ago to them, and we are looking
for a total of about three hundred marines of all
nationalities to reach Peking at any moment.

Legations, such as the Belgian and Austrian,
which are some distance from the Legation centre,
are forced to do constant sentry work to guard
against thieves and incendiaries ; the Ministers
secretaries, and their foreign servants take turn
night and day. They are so surrounded by small
streets and alleys that a few rioters could rush their
Legations easily, and they are forced to keep the

SIR ROBERT HART 13

most alert watch. Melotte, the big blonde Belgian
secretary, came to tea to-day, and gave us a most
vivid description of the difficulties of their tiny
garrison.

Sir Robert Hart, the beloved Inspector- General
of the Customs, dropped in also, and, while he
seems fairly sanguine about the present situation, I
must say the tales of China and the Chinese that
he unfolded to us were quite terrible. Especially
the massacre of the Portuguese at Ning-po in 1870 '
by the Chinese in retaliation for their having taken
so much of the Yangtse River trade made a stirring
story when coming from his lips.

He was with that fascinating Englishman
commonly known as *' Chinese Gordon " when
he was the central figure in the history of China
during the early part of this century, and when
Sir Robert was quite a young man. I was so
obviously spellbound by these real reminiscences
that, to my surprise and joy, he offered to send me,
on his return to his compound, a photograph of
himself taken with Gordon, marked with the latter 's
autograph. I can't say, however, that his visit re-
assured us in our present dangerous situation.

Before leaving he looked at Mr. Squiers's

14 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

wonderful collection of antique Chinese porce-
lains, which Mr. Pethick, a connoisseur in these
things, has collected for him. The Dana Collec-
tion was also procured by him. Sir Robert is
certainly a delightful person, and the cobalt-blue
tie twisted into a most unusual knot around his
low collar gives his personal appearance a tinge of
rakishness and eccentricity.

This afternoon Dr. Morrison and some Customs
students rode down toward the station of Magi-poo
to take a look at the congested market-places and
collections of angry rioters. Directly they were
seen they were furiously stoned, but as their Chinese
ponies were fleet of foot, they escaped with a few
bruises.

May 31.

All day to-day everyone is wondering, " Will
the marines get here to-night ?" A wire came
through Admiral Kempff, saying they were en-
trained. Last night we dined at Sir R. Hart's,
and danced until twelve. He has two bands,
brass and string, of Chinese musicians whom he
has taught. The secretary of the German Lega-
tion took me out to dinner — Von Below, a most
soldierly-looking person.

HERBERT SQUIERS

To face page 14

ARRIVAL OF TROOPS 15

June 1.

Mr. Squiers, secretary of the I^egation, and Mr,
Cheshire, interpreter-secretary, met the troops at the
station last night at 8.30. The marines of the
United States, England, Russia, France, and Japan,
formed the contingent of 365 men which were sent
up from Tien-tsin by the fleet. They would have
arrived earlier in the day, but the British in Tien-
tsin had tried to send 100 marines instead of the
75 for which the Tsung-li Yamen had given them
permission. The Chinese were obdurate, so the
delay was caused.

When this polyglot contingent landed at the
station in Peking there was great excitement as
to which nationality should lead. Captain McCalla,
who had come up with our fifty marines, hurried
his men at the double-quick to get it, and our
troops were the first to march up Legation Street.
There was an enormous mob at the station, but
no demonstration was made except to hurl and
howl curses on the soldiers' ancestors.

Mr. Squiers, who is one of the most hospitable
people in the world, received Captain McCalla and
the marine officers in a delightful manner, and did
everything possible for them in an official and per-

16 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

sonal way. He was an officer in the army before
entering the diplomatic service, which makes his
help and advice invaluable in procuring quarters
for the marines, and other arrangements.

June 3.

Yesterday Captain McCalla took the eleven o'clock
train, with his secretary, back to Tien-tsin, to join
his ship, the Newark, after having had a long talk
discussing the situation with the Minister. We
suppose Admiral Kempff vidll be up in a day or
two, as his visit has been put off already several
times.

The bad and suspicious part of this affair is that
the Boxer outrages are not being punished by the
Government, which proves that they either fear the
perpetrators or sympathize with them. One hears
from all sides that the Chinese soldiers are Boxers
at heart, and would not fire on them if ordered to
do so, The people who will suffer first from these
riotous fanatics, if they get much worse than they
are now, will be the Chinese Christians.

The heat is becoming insufferable, and the
children of the diplomatic corps are showing the
bad effects of this enforced confinement. The

-■>«1»J^

RUSSIAN MARINE GUARD

Copyright, M. S. U'oodwayd

CAPTAIN MCCALLA, COMMANDING THE AMERICAN MARINES

To face page i6

.^ RAILWAY DIFFICULTIES 17

K

British Minister's wife, Lady Maedonald, has sent
her little girls back to their legation bungalow in
the hills, in the care of her charming sister. Miss
Armstrong, with a guard of thirty marines. We
cannot solve the problem in our Legation this way,
as our guard is so much smaller.

June 5.

We expected Admiral KempfF yesterday from
Tien-tsin, but the train did not come through, and
we do not know whether he was on it or not.
The invitations for a dinner in his honour have
been cancelled.

Mrs. Brent, with whom I am to return to
Japan, has sent me word to be ready to-morrow to
take the morning train to Tien-tsin. So far all
the trains from Peking down seem to get through,
although the trains up are irregular. Rumour
comes that yesterday two more stations were burnt,
one on the Hankow line and one on the Tien-tsin
line, but the actual tracks are not destroyed.

Everyone feels that this is the time to leave
Peking — everyone, at least, who is not bound to
remain to protect interests they have in charge —
and to-morrow surely the exodus will be large.
Captain Myers, in command of the United States

18 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

marines, and Captain Strouts, of the British marines,
had a long consultation to-day about these incredibly
outrageous Boxers, in case they should dare im-
pertinences on the Legations. Should we be forced
to leave our American compound, we will go to,
the Russian Legation, which has a stronger defen-
sive position than ours.

June 7.

Yesterday I was ready to start with Mrs. Brent,
when a letter came for Mrs. Squiers from Sir
Robert Hart, saying he thought the train would
eventually "get through" to Tien-tsin, but that his
secret service agents had informed him that there
were rioters and Boxers at several stations prepared
to stone the passenger coaches, and he urged me
not to attempt the trip. He wrote : " Things
must get better soon or very much worse."

Captain Myers and his men were up aU night
guarding the compound. This United States
Legation is such a wretched little irregular place
to defend— it could so easily be fired.

The atmosphere of the compound is distinctly
exciting. The quintessence of American interests
are discussed right here in the open air, under a
few scattered big trees, by people walking about

IMPENDING DANGER 19

gesticulating or standing on scorching hot flag-
stones, which pave part of this enclosure, arguing
with one another as to how soon the coup d'etat
will take place, but all agreeing on one point — that
a cable should be sent immediately to the State
Department in Washington before telegraphic
communication is lost ; that nothing but a tremen-
dous armed force can free the Americans in Peking
from a surely approaching massacre ; that many of
the higher Chinese officials would try to protect us
to the end. But the fact remains, if the Boxers
and rioters continue to increase in numbers each
day as they have been doing for the past week, it
will be the mob we will have to deal with, and not
the Tsung-li Yamen.

In nearly every instance the persons who voice
these sentiments are men who have lived in China
for years, who know the country, the language,
and the people. They know that the strength of
the Chinese lies in clever cunning and mob
violence, that they cannot be trusted under any
circumstances.

These men all agree that China was never before
in such a condition. ^Mr. .'•P-gth ick. famiUar with
every phase of tortuous Chinese government, forty

20 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

years a resident in China, and an intimate friend of
half the political leaders, knowing their weaknesses
and wickednesses by heart, urges the Minister to
state to Washington the situation as it is, but all
to no avail.

The white dazzling star of optimism is blinding
him to facts, and with the British Minister to
stand with him in his position, he says that the
Boxer movement is only a few fanatics, and the
mobs and incendiaries are but slight demonstrations
of the yearly spring riots !

Dr. Coltman, a clever American physician of
Peking, and a correspondent for the Chicago Record,
is sending to his paper some strong cables about
affairs here, but the United States are so saturated
with yellow journalism that probably his wires will
not be believed. When we complain to the
Yamen about the trains running no longer from
Peking to Tien-tsin, as many ladies and children
wish to leave, they smile and say " they regret the
present state of aiFairs, but that in a few days all
will be in working order again." Mr. Pethick thinks
they are not allowing the trains to leave Tien-tsin
because they don't want any more foreign troops
to come to Peking.

TROOPS EXPECTED IN VAIN 21

June 10.

A telegram arrived to-day from Tien-tsin, saying
the second contingent that they have been so
madly telegraphing for these past ^ few days had
practically seized a train and left at 10.10, that
most of the track is supposed to be all right,
but they expect to have difficulty with an occa-
tional broken bridge. Captain McCalla is again
in command of our marines, and the combined
forces of this reUef party number 1,600. We
expect the train to arrive to-night, and, owing to
the gates being closed at sundown, they wiU have
to spend the night outside. To-morrow at day-
break they will be met with twenty carts for their
ammunition and luggage.

June 11.

This morning Mr. Squiers, and Mr. Cheshire, and
Captain Myers, with ten marines, waited at the
station for the troops from daybreak until eleven
o'clock, but there was no sign of them. The
escort then returned to the Legation. The tele-
graph was broken last night. We have no more
communication with the outside world ; our world
is this dangerous Peking.

22 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

June 12.

Such intense excitement ! This afternoon the
Japanese Chancellor of Legation went down to
the railway-station in the official Legation cart to
see if there were any sign of the troops. Return-
ing by the principal gate, he was seized by Imperial
troops, disembowelled, and cut to pieces.

Mr. Squiers had sent about the same hour his
maffu (groom) down to the station with a pony
for Captain McCalla in case the troops had
come. This man was also returning, after having
waited there some hours, when they — the Imperial
Chinese soldiers — saw that he was some foreigner's
servant, and tried to seize him, but he lashed both
horses — the one he was on and the one he was
leading — and just escaped. On reaching the Lega-
tion, he was so terrified he told Mr. Squiers he
would have to leave his service immediately and
try to save his life by running away to Tien-tsin.

Twenty of our marines have been sent with an
officer to guard the big Methodist mission near the
Ha Ta Men Gate, which is still holding out.

Rumours are the only subject of conversation
now. To have them refuted or confirmed, a
Russian bribed a reliable Chinese to go fifty miles

STILL NO TROOPS 23

down the track and to report where the troops are
He could find no sign of them. How very extra-
ordinary 1 Where are these 1,600 men that left
Tien-tsin two days ago? He also reported that
the track was broken in several places.

To-day the house belonging to the British
Minister in the hills, very near our temple, was
looted and burnt by the Boxers. Most fortu-
nately, Miss Armstrong brought the children
back yesterday.

A Russian secretary, Mr. Kroupensky, has figures
at the end of his fingers about the number of troops
Russia can land in Tien-tsin from Port Arthur in
a few days' time, etc., and if things get much worse,
the Russians say it is more than probable their
people will march on to Peking by themselves to
our rescue. Can we suppose they are trying to
prepare us for a Russian coup d'etat ?

Dr. A. W. P, Martin, a famous savant in Chinese
classics and other ancient languages, Director of
the Imperial University in Peking, has temporarily
become the refugee guest of Mr. Squiers, his own
house being too unsafe for him to remain in.
Mr. Pethick is also a guest in this hospitable house.
The British Legation is already crammed with

24 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

missionaries and refugees, who in their own
quarters feared for their lives, and were obliged to
leave their missions near Peking, and concentrate
at some place capable of defence.

A message that has to be sent to the Tsung-li
Yamen always gains more strength by being sent
from each Legation the same day. To-day the
Japanese were requested to join the others with
this usual procedure, but they answered simply :
" Impossible. The Chinese have murdered our
Third Secretary of Legation, and Japan can have
no more communication with China — except war."

June 13.

All last night the sky was bright from the many
fires in the Tartar city — work done by the Boxers
and soldiers. The Roman Catholic Church, the
" Tungchou," was burnt to the ground, and all
through the night the Christian Chinese who lived
near it were massacred. Other less important
missions have also been destroyed. Yesterday
the people in the Austrian Legation rescued a
Chinese Christian woman who was being burned
to death very near their Legation wall.

Baron von Ketteler, the German Minister, con-

s5

H
H
<

S

2;
w

a

u

MEASURES FOR DEFENCE 25

sidered some Boxer who walked down Legation
Street was impertinent to him, and chased him up
the street as far as the Russian Bank, where he
finally captured him. He was beating him over
the head with his walking-stick even before the
fellow stopped, and the crowd that collected was
enormous. Captain Myers, Captain Strouts of
the English, and Baron von Rahden, of the Russian
guard, seized this opportunity to make a kind of
rush down and up Legation Street, placing the
Maxim-gun ready to use if necessary, and in this
way completely cleared it of Chinese from the
Dutch Legation down to the Italian. They had
wanted to take this step for some time, deeming it
has now become necessary to take real measures
for our defence. They were glad of this excuse.

June 16.

In the afternoon yesterday we were horrified at
the number of big fires that broke out in so many
different parts of the Tartar city, and when we
saw that the Ch'ien Men Gate was blazing, and
aU the houses around in the same condition,
we felt we were in great danger. If this got a
hold, it would burn up the Legation district of

26 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

Peking very quickly. There are two parts of the city
— the northern Manchu city, containing the Imperial
palaces and garrison, also the foreign Legations ; and
the southern or Chinese city, containing the trading
population, theatres, and markets. Both parts are
joined in the form of the letter T, the leg or largest
part being the Manchu city on the north, with
walls 60 feet high, 40 feet wide at the top, loop-
holed parapets 3 feet high at the side, and square
bastions 100 yards apart on the outside face. At
wide intervals along the inside face are pairs of
inclined roads, 8 feet wide, for mounting the wall.
The total length of this rectangular wall on the
four sides of the Manchu city is about twelve
miles. Joined to this great wall on the south is
the much lower and weaker wall of the Chinese or
southern city. All nationalities sent men, even
these traitorous Pekingese, to aid us in extinguish-
ing the fire. The Imperial fire-brigade arrived with
great pomp, and could have furnished charming
costumes for some "extravaganza" in their get-up.
They had no idea how to put a fire out, but fortu-
nately they had some hose, which, when used in the
telling places, proved most efficacious.

Our men fought this terrible fire side by side

Jo face pa^e 26

FIGHTING THE FIRE 27

with the Chinese, and this goes to show how a
common danger levels most things, even active
hostilities. The Cossacks worked exceptionally
well. This fire had been started by the rioters and
thieves in the rich bazaar district of the city, under
cover of which they hoped to get much rich booty.
The wind being high, the flames gained great head-
way, and the tremendous Ch'ien Men Gate was soon
ablaze. By eight o'clock the fire was somewhat
controlled ; but it burned all night, and when seen
from the Great Wall it looked like a huge torch.

June 17.

Just one week ago to-day we got the telegram
that the combined forces of England, the United
States, France, Japan, etc., now at Taku, number-
ing 1,600 men and over, had practically seized a
train at Tien-tsin, and, with workmen on board to
mend the track where it had been derailed, had
left at 10 a.m. to go to the relief of the Legations in
Peking. Mght and day, ever since that telegram
came, we have been looking for them. The day
after we received the news that they had started
the Chinese cut the telegraph-wires, and so for one
week we have been absolutely cut off from all
communication.

28 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

No messenger has been able to get through
the city gates, as they are carefully watched by
the Chinese authorities, except — and I am proud
of this — except that one old man whom Mr.
Squiers had been good to (he used to be an old
gardener of theirs) got through to Captain McCaUa,
who is with Admiral Seymour, and is in command of
100 men — ^Americans. The gardener had been able
to deliver to him notes from Mr. Squiers, giving
him most important information about ways and
means to get into Peking in case they meet with
opposition, and to bring back an answer, as well as
other notes from commanders of other nationalities,
to their respective Legations in Peking. From
these letters we rather imagine that this " Tower
of Babel " relief party does not agree as weU as it
might, but then, whoever expected a " Tower of
Babel " to speak and work in unison ? Certainly
never before the miracle 1

So it is due to Mr. Squiers 's personal management
that we or any other nationality have heard any-
thing from this party of 1,600 men, which un-
doubtedly must be but the beginning of large
numbers of troops for what Lord Charles Beres-
ford terms " the break-up of China." Our Lega-

MR SQUIERS 29

tion, thanks entirely to Mr. Squiers's efforts, is the
only one which has been in touch at aU with the
approaching column, and, by his minute instruc-
tions, when they get here they will be able to
advance into the heart of our district — through the
Water Gate — without having to take any of the
city citadel gates. They say that in all crises,
pohtical or otherwise, some one man comes
forward, takes the bull by the horns, so to speak,
and does a man's work. Mr. Squiers, as far as all
the Americans here feel, is the man in Peking.

The fighting, the weak and terrorized Govern-
ment, the expected attack on the Legations, the
horrible massacre of the Chinese Christians, the
burning of aU the missions, churches, and entire
Christian communities, and last, but not least, the
continued attempts — made, we think, principally
by Boxers — to " burn the Legations out," all go to
make these days very extraordinary ones.

Last night there was a scene enacted in our
Republican compound that would be a fitting
climax to any Bowery play where Jake, the villain,
is finally run down. A regulation Boxer — red
sash and all — was caught by a Russian sentry in
the act of trying to set fire to the outhouses of this

30 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

Legation. He was assisted into the compound by
the Cossack who discovered him, with no especial
tenderness of manner, the Chinaman still clutching
the picturesque and glowing torch with which the
conflagration was to have been started. In three
minutes coolies, soldiers, gorgeously dressed Lega-
tion servants, the European men in the compound,
and we women, who were in the midst of our
dinner, rushed out to see what it was (as we did
fifty times a day, so far as that goes), to find this
poor, writhing creature, who knew that he had
nothing to expect but death in the next half-hour,
as he had been caught red-handed. He was
questioned, but to no purpose, and was then turned
over to the Russians, as they had been responsible
for his discovery ; and, although we aU knew that
that nation dislikes prisoners, we were hardly
prepared for the bullet that, in less than ten
minutes, whistled clear as a bell on the night air,
and told us there was one Boxer the less in Peking.
Captain Myers has turned out to be a most
competent officer, and the British Captain Strouts
and the Russian Captain von Rahden have worked
together splendidly for the object of saving our
three Legations from attack and fire. These

BARRICADE BETWEEN THE AMERICAN AND RUSSIAN LEGATIONS

/ f '^^

Copyright, M. S. iroodward

READING THE SENTENCE OF DEATH TO THE BOXERS CAUGHT
IN THE RUSSIAN LEGATION

To face page so

BRITISH LEGATION AND DEFENCE 31

Legations form a kind of triangle, our corner of
which is the weakest owing to its bad shape. The
British compound is excellent for defence, having
strong, high walls, with stables or houses at the
corners, one side having the canal running parallel
to it, and the other having the Imperial carriage
park.

When the time comes that the United States
and Russian Legations can no longer hold out, the
British Legation will be the stage for a terrible last
act. So far, of course, things are not as bad as that,
and fire is what we dread more than the disaffected
Chinese soldiers or Boxers. Nevertheless, things
got so critical the day before yesterday that food
for a week for our entire Legation was sent over to
the British compound, and each of us had sent over
a dress suit-case with a change of linen, brushes,
etc., so that in the event of our having to leave our
Legation on the moment, we would not be
absolutely comfortless and unprepared for a siege
of several days until Seymour and McCalla could
relieve us.

Yesterday things got so bad that our bugler
played the " call to arms " four different times,
which is the signal here for all women and children

2 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

nd all non-fighting men to appear at the big gate
f the Legation, and within five minutes from that
ime Captaii;!^ ^Myers will decide what must be
one — whether the marines will escort us over to
ae Russian or the British Legation. After each of
tiese alarms, however, it was decided not to send
s quite yet. At the last alarm they kept us
?^aiting, all huddled together like sheep, for an
our. And such an hour as it was — the constant
sports of Mauser rifles, the absolute lack of know-
ig what was happening !

But at one moment I was obliged to forget the
srror of it all and look at the humorous side.
Irs. Squiers was holding her youngest boy, a baby
f four, in her arms, busy in quieting him. Her
ther boys. Bard and Herbert, were there, too,
ither subdued, and last, but not least, our little
ortege was completed by the arrival of the French
nd German governesses, each of them arguing
iolently in her respective mother-tongue. Made-
loiselle is a large woman of ample proportions in
Tong places, and she had her bosom filled with re-
ommendation papers, which she fingered nervously
-they were all she was saving in the way of valu-
bles. Clara, the German governess, had forgotten

DIVISION OF FORCES 33

what her valuables were, and looked quite dis-
traught with fear. She had a French clock in each
hand, and was teUing me in broken English, German,
and Chinese how afraid and terrified she was. I
said to her, " Gehen Sie mit mir," and she clutched
my arm most painfully for the next half-hour.

As I have said, fifty men came to Peking from
the Newark on May 31, and twenty of them with
an officer were sent to defend the big Methodist
mission near the Ha Ta Men Gate, which, because
of its area and large stone church, is capable of a
very good defence, and where all of the American
Protestant missionaries that are lucky enough to
be in Peking have gone. Much to Captain Myers'
disgust — it is so hopeless to divide this small
mihtary force — the Minister insisted on sending
this guard to them, instead of having them brought
into our defended lines. Consequently, there is
no officer to share the responsibiUty with him, or
to give his men a sufficient number of hours off
duty during the twenty-four. He himself gets about
four hours sleep per diem, and that has to be taken
in cat-naps and in a folding-chair. He is Hable to
have even that short period interrupted a dozen
times by an over-anxious sergeant, who wakes him

5

34 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

up to come and see this or hear that. He naturally
feels the responsibility tremendously, and is on the
qui vive at every shot. His men are in about the
same condition. This strain has been without
relief for eight days and nights.

Of the thirty marines here, ten, Dr. Lippitt tells
me, should be on the sick-list, and imagine how
they feel with a compound full of women to
defend against perhaps thousands of half-crazed
fanatics who at any moment may break into the
Legation. Their work is splendid, and at all
times they are prepared for the worst, but the
constant strain is unimaginable.

Captain McCalla wrote in his letter, which
Mr. Squiers's old messenger brought back to us,
that he was in despair, as others in the relief party
were not hustling enough. Our cry by night and
day is, "When will the troops arrive?" Will
they get here before or after some horrible
massacre ?

The men in the compound carry their rifles
with them at all times, even when dining. Mr.
Squiers a few days ago presented modern rifles
with ammunition to all missionaries coming to
the Legation. Taken collectively, these mission-

A RESCUE EXPEDITION 35

aries are a splendid lot of men, and are one and
all most grateful to him for these arms, given
them in this moment of awful danger to their
converts, their famihes, and themselves. One
night all left the table four times to run to the
outposts, where shots and fighting were heard. In
most cases, fortunately, they are not serious alarms
— a few venturesome Boxers or Imperial soldiers
running amuck in Peking after loot, who have
decided to devil the foreigners. About three days
ago we expected the troops any minute ; now we
are not so sanguine.

A detachment of men from the English Legation,
our Legation, and the Russian Legation, started
off under an English officer to rescue some of the
thousands of Chinese Christians who are being
burned and tortured by their enemies like rats
in their holes. The tales that reached us through
our servants, many of whom are Christian con-
verts, and whose mothers, fathers, and wives are
undergoing this continuous St. Bartholomew, made
our men feel that we should try to do some-
thing for their rescue, even if we were not
successful. Fortunately this party of men did not
meet any large number of disciplined Chinese

36 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

soldiers, finding them only in small groups. They
killed a great many, and one could easily imagine
how happy our men were to be able to kill these
wretches in the very act of burning, looting, killing,
or torturing. Sergeant Walker told me he had
sent eight devils to glory ; many of his shots he
had seen take effect, and others he hoped had
done as good work.

The "Nan-t'ang," a Roman Catholic church,
founded in 1600 by the early Jesuit missionaries,
was burnt by these Boxers, and as most of their
converts and families live around the church, one
can well imagine the slaughter that took place
before it was finally fired. This is only one instance
of the many missions and churches where the
same kind of thing has happened. The Roman
Catholics alone claim to have ten thousand converts
in Peking.

The Pei-t'ang is a large fortress cathedral, and
capable of splendid defence. It is the oldest and
richest Roman Catholic stronghold. In its dual
r&le of church and military position, which in the
old days used to go hand in hand, this community
reminds one of the wonderful and still extant
example of feudal power, the Mont St. Michel

BOXER ATROCITIES 37

in Brittany, where cathedral and fortress dominate
the higher part, and its villages cluster around the
base. So here this Roman Catholic stronghold
boasts the same arrangements, only with added
hospitals and orphan quarters. It is a wonderful
church to exist now, when the world is so old,
and is supposed to be so peaceful. The French
Minister has sent a guard with two officers to help
Archbishop Favier, Superior of the Pei-t'ang.

In some instances hundreds of Christians
thought it better to be roasted in their houses and
burnt to death than to try and escape. Then, of
course, the soldiers. Boxers, and thieves would
loot the entire entourage of these burning com-
munities, and, having once begun, they would
not stop to inquire if the family were Buddhist
or Christian. They were busy in this pleasant
work when our posse of soldiers arrived on the
scene of action, and the Chinese companies that
had been detailed for this work were so disor-
ganized by their lust of loot and cruelties that they
were practically unable to attack us, and generally
ran away, except in some rare instances, when they
would rally and fight.

Mr. Pethick and Mr. Cheshire would raise their

6

38 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

voices in Chinese and tell the terrified people to
come with them and they would be saved. Some-
times it was necessary to go into the houses to
assure the people of this help. On entering the
houses they saw many horrible sights — women and
children whose lives it was too late to save.
There was one small square compound that the
Boxers had burned, while in the inside there was
an entire family of Chinese Christians. The four
waUs were on fire, and these people were tied hand
and foot. Our men were unable to save them in
any way, and hastened to other places where they
would not be too late. Babies were seen being
torn in two. The result of this morning's work
was the rescue of about one thousand Chinese
Christians, who otherwise would certainly have
been burned or killed within a few hours.

The officer in charge had them brought up
Legation Street, which has lately been barricaded,
and, except foreigners, no one is allowed to walk
or pass. Two big barricades have been made
at each end, one beyond the Dutch Legation,
the other below the Italian Legation. And such
a lot of poor, wretched people I hope never to see
again. Half starved, covered with soot and ashes

THE RESCUED CHRISTIANS 39

from the fires, women carrying on their breasts
horribly sick and diseased babies, and in one case
a woman held a dead baby. One man of about
fifty years old carried on his shoulders his old
mother, who must have been every day of ninety
years. She looked so withered and wrinkled, one
had to think of the burning of Troy and ^neas.
A great many of these people were terribly
wounded — great spear- thrusts that made jagged
wounds, scalp-cuts and gashes on the throat where
the victim had been left for dead.

Dr. Lippitt, who came up with the marines, and
the English and Russian siu-geons set to work, and
tried to patch these poor people together again,
and they toiled, the three of them, steadily for
many hours. I have never imagined that such
stoicism as these wretched creatures exhibited
could exist. They never uttered a cry or moved
even when the surgeons were operating on them.

Then the question arose as to what should be
done with them. They could not stay in the road ;
the Legations could not have them. Dr. Morrison
and Dr. H. James hit upon one of the happiest of
ideas — namely, the seizing of a lovely park belong-
ing to a Prince Su, which runs parallel to the British

40 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

Legation, and is on the other side of the canal. It
is so big there would be plenty of room for as many
of these poor people as we shall be able to rescue,
and being so near us, it will be quite possible for us
to defend it. Dr. Morrison saw that the idea was
carried out, and Dr. H. James went personally to
Prince Su, and interpreted to him that it would not
only be kind, but wise, for him to present his palace
and park to his distressed fellow-citizens, who were
being massacred by the Imperial soldiers in different
parts of Peking, and in this way to furnish them with
a refuge from the brutes who had killed thousands
of them, and who were desirous of killing the
rest. Dr. James impUed that unless he volun-
tarily gave up his " fu " (meaning park), we would
take it.

Prince Su was most suave, and said nothing
would give him greater pleasure. There was
probably some truth in what he said. He was
only too glad to get as far away as possible from
these Legation people, notwithstanding he would
have to give up his palace. The danger for his
life might be very great if he were suspected, even
for a moment, of sympathizing with the foreigners,
as might easily have been maintained by his enemies

PRINCE SU'S FU 41

had he continued to live in this palace, which we
told him he might do, as it was only his big park
we wanted for the Christians. He vacated the
same day, leaving all of his treasure and half of
his harem. Thanks are due to Dr. Morrison.

How queerly things happen ! These poor
Avretches, who had been tortured and hounded to
death only two hours before by Imperial troops,
were now housed in the palace of a mighty Prince,
and almost within the shadow of the Empress-
Dowager's palace. For three days this splendid
work of rescuing has continued, but finally
Captain Myers decided that, with all the night-
watching and hard, long hours of sentry work, our
men could no longer endure it. So it was dis-
continued, and I beheve the other Legations have
stopped for the same reason. The Enghsh, Rus-
sians, and our men usually went on these rescue
parties together, and I never heard of friction,
though they were sometimes under an officer of
one nationahty and the next day under another.
The ten to twenty marines who were on these
parties counted at a very low estimate that they
must have killed 350 thieves. Boxers, and Imperial
Chinese soldiers.

42 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

English Compound,
June 21.

Things are rapidly changing for the worse. On
the afternoon of the 19th a communication came
from the Yamen addressed to all the Ministers,
saying that, as all, or most, of the European Powers
had fired on the Taku Forts, war was practically
declared, and, such being the case, they would be
pleased for all the Legations to take their passports,
and allow the Chinese Imperial troops to escort
them safely to the coast, whence they could leave
the country. This was a thunderbolt coming to
the Ministers, and yet so plausible and possible did
the proposition appear to Sir Claude Macdonald
and Mr. Conger that they were almost ready to
acquiesce if the Chinese promised proper trans-
portation.

The German Minister, Von Ketteler, was very
undecided — so much so that he determined to go
by himself the next morning to the Tsung-H Yamen
and have a quiet talk with the members, and in
this way arrive at a conclusion as to whether there
would be foul play in case we accepted their escort.
As he had some knowledge of the Chinese lan-
guage, he was able to probe a little deeper into a

PREPARING TO LEAVE 48

conversation than were his colleagues, who were
naturally forced to speak entirely through an
interpreter.

The majority of the Ministers — De Giers,
Cologan, Knobel, Pichon, Salvage Raggi, etc. —
were wavering, first to accept the proposition and
then not to ; but by five o'clock in the afternoon it
was so generally believed that the Ministers as a
body would accept the Tsung-li Yamen's ultimatum
that all foreigners should leave the next morning at
ten, that the executive members of the different
Legation staffs had been out buying or prociiring
in any way possible large numbers of Chinese carts
for the Legation personnel, and we women were
packing the tiny amount of hand-luggage we were
to be allowed to take with us, wondering whether
to fiU the small bag with a warm coat, to protect
us on this indefinite journey to the coast, or to take
six fi'esh blouses. Our hearts were wrung as to
what to do, and while we were arranging and
worrying about these trivial details the great diplo-
matic question was at a white-heat.

The Ministers were moving about from one
Legation to another, arguing, talking — always
talking. The strong men felt we must not leave

44 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

Peking until our own foreign soldiers arrived to
escort us, but the weak men felt in despair as to
which course to vote for. They did not like the
idea of leaving either, but, oh dear, what a breach
of diplomacy to receive their passports and then to
decline to go ! The strong, who knew, were so
few, and the weak, who feared to disobey the
Tsung-li Yamen, were so many, that it looked
very much as if we were all to start out to our
deaths the following morning.

During the afternoon two or three men made a
visit to the Legations, hoping to be able to rally the
Ministers into promising to cast an undiplomatic
vote when the final conference should take place ;
and at one time Dr. TVIorri snn took the floor, he
being the spokesman for the vast crowd of intelligent
individuals — engineers, bankers, trades-people, and
missionaries — who one and all were in favour of
waiting until Seymour and McCalla arrived. He
looked the Ministers square in the eyes, and
said:

" If you men vote to leave Peking to-morrow, the
death of every man, woman, and child in this huge
unprotected convoy will be on your heads, and
your names will go through history and be known

z
w

<

o
z
p

MURDER OF VON KETTELER 45

for ever as the wickedest, weakest, and most
pusillanimous cowards who ever lived."

On the evening of the 19th Von Ketteler sent an

official letter to the Yamen, saying on the following

morning, at ten o'clock, he should go to the Foreign

Office, as he wished to discuss with the Tsung-U

Yamen the trip to Tien-tsin, etc. A little before

ten on the morning of the 20th he started to keep

this appointment. He was in his official chair, his

interpreter in one behind him, and both unarmed.

Four of his Legation guard started out with him,

but, after proceeding a short distance. Von Ketteler

saw the congested condition of the streets and the

great number of excited soldiers everywhere, and,

rather than run the possibility of his men getting

into a row, he sent them back to the Legation, and

proceeded on his way to the Yamen in just such a

style as a high Chinese mandarin would go through

the streets, with only his two maffus riding on in

front as outriders. These Chinese servants, being

mounted, were the first people to bring the news

back to the German Legation of his murder. Von

Ketteler was passing a kind of guard-house where at

all times a fairly large number of Imperial Chinese

soldiers was kept. A number of them rushed out,

46 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

surrounded his chair, and shot him many times in
the back of the head. His interpreter was shot at
as he was escaping with great difficulty, and a
volley of shot was fired at him as he started to run.
He escaped, however, to the big Methodist mission,
where his wounds were dressed and he was cared
for.

When the horrible news came to the German
Legation, all the soldiers and officers there made a
sortie as near as possible over the route taken by
Von Ketteler ; but it was not feasible for them to
continue the search for his body, as they could
very easily have been cut off from the Legation
quarter by the Chinese troops, and have been placed
in a desperate position.

When the story of Von Ketteler 's murder had
been confirmed, a shiver of horror shook each and
every foreigner then in Peking ; and we realized,
perhaps for the first time, the horror of our position.
Baroness von Ketteler, half crazed, wandered wildly
about the most exposed and dangerous part of the
German Legation. It was only by Lady Macdonald's
teUing her that probably her husband's body was at
the British Legation that she was able to get her
there, it being necessary, of course, for her to be put

DEPARTURE ABANDONED 47

somewhere safe from bullet-fire, where women
could be with her and do what httle they could.

Those soldiers who killed Von Ketteler were
Imperial Chinese troops, and represent the Empress-
Dowager, and for them to have the audacity to
kiU a Minister shows us how much real power for
the good there is in Peking to-day.

In the early afternoon the Ministers in confer-
ence decided that everyone must go to the British
compound — that is to say, all women and children,
missionaries, etc. The idea of getting our pass-
ports was no more discussed. Von Ketteler 's murder
had opened our eyes to our real position and the
real attitude of the Imperial troops, so that the
question of being escorted by them to the coast was
never again seriously thought of for a moment,
except to feel that Von Ketteler 's death was the
price we paid in order to learn of the positive
treachery of the Chinese officials, although one must
not forget there were many clever men in Peking
who from the first argued in the strongest way
against our going to Tien-tsin with a Chinese escort,
begging the Ministers to wait until our own relief
force, under Seymour, should arrive, and then let
our own soldiers escort us to Tien-tsin. There is

48 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

no question, however, that as a body the Ministers
were for accepting the offer of the Chinese officials,
and that it was only the tragedy of the 20th that
made them see the impossibility of such a course.

The women and children and non-fighting men
having gone to the British Legation, the men and
marines in each Legation will stay and defend their
respective fortresses as long as possible, and then
make the English compound the one for a final
stand. Legation Street, beginning with the Italian
Legation, is completely cleared of all Chinese, and
extends over the bridge up to our Legation, where
we made big barricades, as we have this part of the
street to defend ; then the British Legation con-
tinues down from the bridge by the Imperial Wall
up to the canal to the Tartar Wall. Besides this
place of defence (which is the best position, and
wiU be the final refuge for everyone), the Legations
are defending themselves and their flags as long as
they can ; for, by keeping our lines as large as
possible, when the end comes we shall be able
slowly to retreat more and more, which will give us
time, and by each day gained reUef must be getting
nearer.

As we have positive proof from the Chinese

MRS. SQUIERS'S GENEROSITY 49

that the Admirals have taken the Taku Forts, it
must be that reUef is very near, or they would
never have jeopardized our lives in Peking by this
overt act of war, unless at the same time they were
in a position to save us in case the Chinese in
Peking would retahate by attempting to massacre
us.

The American missionaries of several denomina-
tions, who have been defended in their big missions
near the Ha Ta Men Gate by twenty of our marines,
have been brought to our Legation to-day bag and
baggage, not to mention babies. They consist of
seventy-six adults and a large number of children,
and while here Mrs. Squiers arranged a luncheon
for everybody — men, women, and children ; and,
although she knows her food-supplies may possibly
run short for her own large family, she opened her
storeroom, containing staple groceries and many
crates of condensed mUk and cream, and urged
these women to take, individually or collectively,
literally as much as they could carry of the
articles they most needed to tide them over until
the troops arrive. These women had all had a
taste of siege life, and already knew what it was
to see their children show the lack of proper food ;

7

50 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

and they consequently availed themselves fully
of Mrs. Squiers's more than generous oflfer. It was
a happy " mothers' congress " that denuded those
storeroom shelves, and then this missionary convoy
was taken over to the British Legation, and Lady
Macdonald gave them the chapel for their lodging.
There are so many women in our United States
Legation that the British have assigned us the
doctor's bungalow. Dr. Poole is the compound
surgeon, and we are living in comparative comfort
compared to the people of other Legations. Politics
seem to enter into the distribution of the Legation
houses that are assigned to the heads of each Lega-
tion, and after a Minister is given one, he proceeds
to arrange his people as comfortably as he can.
Our house has not many rooms, but they are large,
whereas the Russian Minister has been given the
second secretary's house, which is in bad repair, and
is anything but commodious. Sir R. Hart, as
Chief of Customs, has one of the inferior houses,
which is unfortunate, as his Customs officials are
very numerous ; but then, from time immemorial,
the British Minister has never loved the Customs
people's great power in having control of the huge
revenues of China.

BARRICADE ACROSS THE CANAL TO THE FU

Copyright, M. S. IP'oodward

SANDBAG BARRICADE IN AMERICAN LEGATION

To face fa^e io

STILL WAITING FOR RELIEF 51

It is now almost two weeks since the troops
started from Tien-tsin. Where are they ? Sey-
mour must be in command, and Sir Robert Hart
suggests that, when he gets here, we call him
Admiral See-no-more, or, if the Queen wishes to
increase his rank for his rapid relief of Peking, she
could with reason call him Lord Slow-come. The
Russians themselves have christened Colonel
Wogack Colonel Go-back.

Thank heavens that this compound is spacious —
big trees and comparatively numerous houses. The
Protestant missionaries are now all housed in the
Legation chapel, where they have turned the vestry
room into a model kitchen and the altar into a
table d'hote. A herd of sheep and a cow have been
corralled and installed in the stables, so we shall
have meat, in case we are besieged, for several weeks.
But if we are not besieged so long, the most
sanguine say that the Chinese, who are a nation of
cowards, will get over their awe of the foreigner
when they find how easily they have made him
leave his Legations and collect in the strongest one.
When the moment arrives when they entirely lose
that awe, how easy it will be for Tung Fu-hsiang
alone (even he controls about 10,000 troops around

52 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

Peking) to make a rush on us, although perhaps the
only strength of his force lies in its numbers ! To
get in, to fire and massacre all the hated foreigners
at one catch, is not at all impossible.

Legation Street being held by us Americans, we
were allowed to have our trunks brought over
here and placed in the five-room house which was
turned over to Mr. Conger for himself and oflficial
family. Dr. Poole, to whom this bungalow
belonged, ate at a mess, so that, not having any
need for his stove in the kitchen of his house, it
was immaterial to him whether it was broken or
not, but what a difference it made to us ! Mr.
Conger's large family, increased by several guests
from Chicago, had their meals cooked on this
delightful stove at certain hours. Our family —
that of the First Secretary of the Legation — is also
very large, and accordingly we find it necessary to
have meals at other hours ; then, again, the Second
Secretary, Mr. Bainbridge, arranges his chow at
times during the day when it may be possible to cook
something ; and still again, Dr. Coltman, with his
wife and six children, who have a room in the
bungalow, have a definite time for their mess.

As we have come in so recently, our meals are

BOARD AND LODGING 53

mostly cold, in the spirit of catch as catch can.
I find a great deal of coffee and tinned beef is
devoured during the day with great gusto by our
officers, soldiers, and civilians. Yesterday we
brought all the tinned things over here from our
Legation, but, as we are extremely uncertain as to
the length of our siege, we realize it is just as well
not to have too large appetites.

Mr. Squiers has been assigned two rooms of this
house placed at the disposal of the United States
Legation. They are situated at the back, opening
directly on the filthy, dirty Chinese servants
quarters. Mrs. Squiers, my maid, and I have
the large room, which is practically the living-room
for the family and mess of the First Secretary of
the Legation. Our trunks, with two silver chests,
and all the many dozens of tins of food that we
brought from our Legation, are banked all round,
up against the walls. The big double mattress on
which we sleep is rolled up in the daytime, and
we use it for seats as well as the trunks. We have
no furniture, as Dr. Poole moved his bed to the
hospital and found other places for the rest that he
had, so the room is completely empty. Perhaps it
is just as well, however, because we have great

8

54 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

difficulty in finding a place big enough to spread our
mattress out when night comes as our stores and
trunks almost fiU the room.

The three children have their respective cribs,
which we were wise enough to bring over from
our Legation. They are placed in the other room
which looks out on the little avenue that runs
through the compound. The air is much purer
there than in our room, where we breathe the
servants' air and gas which rises from a broken
sewer. The French and German governesses are
placed in the ends of small haUs.

When we were collecting a few comforts —
mattresses, cribs for the children, etc, — in our
Legation to bring over to this compound, we
carelessly brought, too, a light-blue satin eiderdown
quilt, which we took from one of the bedrooms,
and now we are glad to have it, for it serves as a
most admirable portable bed. When his services
are not needed as orderly to Captain Strouts, Fargo
Squiers gets some hours of good rest on it. He
takes it to any particular spot where he thinks his
services may be needed during the night, and,
with a childhke ability to sleep anywhere, and an
old veteran's ability to wake up promptly, he finds

THE CHILDREN 55

this scrap of luxury from the old life doing excellent
duty as a campaign adjunct. The sky-blue shade,
however, is fast becoming a rich London smoke.
Mr. Squiers, Hke other men who assist at the night-
attacks, and must be ready to work anywhere at
any time, sleeps in his clothes and his boots, usually
in the American Legation, taking his rest in periods
of forty winks at such time as he is not needed.

As things are not systematically arranged yet —
in fact, we hope the troops will be here before we
need to get things in such a condition — we do a
good deal of cooking on our chafing-dish. When
we turn the room into a nursery for the children
(for we cannot keep them always in their own
room, nor can we allow them to be much in the
compound, as half the time it is thick with ex-
ploding buUets), it is then a sight to behold.
There are a good many children here. Their one
game seems to be " Boxers," and they copy in
miniature what we grown-ups are playing in
earnest. The younger ones are forced into being
the attacking Chinese, and I am afraid when the
big ones repulse them, they occasionally get very
real bumps on their heads. They have small
sandbags and barricades, and their Chinese war-

56 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

whoop of Sha, sha! (Kill, kill!) is a creditable imita-
tion of the real thing. It is all very clever, and they
are all very full of life, and I help them to play, for
it's a good thing that they don't realize what all
this may mean, and we hope that relief will come
before they lose their spirit and before they know.

One can see, on walking about, missionary
children, of whom there are quantities, elbowing
Ministers Plenipotentiary, and the latter going
about without collars. The Belgian Minister, for
instance, is a good example of the condition of
to-day. He, with his First Secretary of Legation,
M. Merghelynckem, Chevalier de Melotte, and his
English valet, have been most gallantly defending
their Legation for a long time without help of any
kind. They killed many Boxers who attacked them,
but they were so few that they found it impossible,
after eight days, to hold out any longer, and were
forced to leave. A party of Austrian soldiers went
to their rescue and escorted them into the Legation
lines, as the Belgian is quite distant from this centre.
They had the pleasure of seeing their compound
fired fifteen minutes after they left, and knew it
was being looted as well. They then became
"refugee colleagues," and stopped first with the

THE MISSIONARIES' WORK 57

Austrians, then came here. They have for ward-
robes the clothes they have on their backs, only
M. Joostens has one extra blue cotton shirt and
one piqu^ cravat.

Our Protestant missionaries are working steadily
and continually wherever it is most essential, and
besides doing everywhere the work of men, they
have taken under their wing the care and feeding of
that vast number of rescued Chinese converts who
are now in Prince Su's park. Most of the R.oman^
-Ca thohc brothe rs, in contrast, not only do not raise
■ a finger to work, but in no way occupy themselves
usefully.

Firing seems to continue at all times, but it is
mostly over our heads. Yesterday Boxers tried to
loot and fire the Dutch Legation, which is next to
ours, and Captain Myers turned our machine-gun
on the crowd for a minute and killed six Boxers,
so the attempt to loot was not successful, but the
burning of the compound continues. The
Methodist Mission, so lately vacated, was looted
and burned last night. So much happens in every
twenty-four hours I can hardly keep account of it
all, and as a background to the hourly horrors that
develop is the continuous snipe, snipe, sniping, mostly

58 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

by our own men, who are on roofs of buildings
shooting at the constantly approaching incendiaries.

AU food-supplies which can be procured in any
way from anywhere by anyone have now to be
turned in to the committee in charge of food, and
everything is deposited with them on the erstwhUe
tennis-court of the British Legation, which is their
headquarters. In fact, everything of a useful
nature is stored there, whence it will later be
distributed where most needed. The two foreign
shops in Peking are Imbeck's and KierufTs, and as
they are too far up Legation Street to be de-
fended in any way, they have been abandoned by
their owners with their contents. The committee
on food-supplies, although greatly desiring the
stores on the shelves of these shops, would not
attempt to get them, as anyone making the
attempt would become a perfect target for Boxer
snipers as soon as he left the protection of our last
barricade on Legation Street.

Imagine our surprise when, late in the afternoon,
a Chinese cart, driven by Fargo Squiers, a boy of
fifteen years old, came thundering into the British
compound with the upper part of the cart riddled
with bullet-holes. He was heading for the two

A PLUCKY ENTEEPRISE 59

rooms in Dr. Poole's house which had been allotted
to his family, and his freight consisted of dozens of
tins of the above-mentioned supplies from Imbeck's
death-surrounded shop, which he had procured at
the greatest risk to his own Hfe. The committee
were about to order him to unload his desirable
cargo with them, to be used for the good of the
public, but upon hearing that the boy had ridden
into the very jaws of death to procure these sup-
plies, and had dared what no man in the compound
had dared to do, they told him he could have the
disposition of them, for by his rash valour he had
well earned the lot.

It seems he procured a Chinese cart and forced
two coolies to go with him. On their way to
Imbeck's one was killed by a bullet in his head,
and though the other survived to help him load the
cart, after arriving in the courtyard of the place, he
had difficult work, as coolie number two tried to run
away, and twice the boy had to point the muzzle of
his rifle at him, indicating what he would do if he
made any further attempts. They were fairly free
from shots while actually loading the cart. On the
return trip every yard of the way they were peppered
by bullets, and the second coolie was wounded.

60 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

but not killed. This boy saw what he thought he
ought to do, and he did it ; but what a terrible price
might have been paid for these stores ! Apropos of
stores, these last certainly are welcome. Our mess
is large, and so many tins were given to the
missionaries and other needy people before we came
to the British compound that we would have felt
the lack of staple groceries tremendously had not
this large windfall arrived.

The committee on food supplies have two articles
in tremendous quantities— all kinds of tobacco
(long black cigars and Egyptian cigarettes) and
dozens of cases of wines, mostly red and white,
which will be a great help to the Continentals here.
These supplies were procured by the committee
from deserted shops near enough to the Legation
centre to make their procuring not too dangerous.
I think the general public was more pleased at the
arrival of these stores than were the missionaries
in charge, for with misgivings the question arose
surely in their minds, Were these things sent to us
from Heaven or from the other place ?

Friday, June 23.

The excitement to-day is terrible, and much more
intense than anything we have yet had. Fires

FIRE AND LOOTING 61

are starting in all our "lines." The horror and
dislike of leaving our respective Legations to con-
centrate in the British is nothing compared to the
fact that if we leave our Legation the Boxers and
Chinese soldiers will immediately burn them and
loot them, and this may give them such a lust for
loot and pillage that it may become an incentive
strong enough to overcome their national fear of
attacking, and make it most ten-ibly difficult for
us to hold out until the troops come. Until
the troops come ! What a wail that is ! and it
is heard at all times, and all people take their
turn in asking somebody else, "When will they
come ?"

This afternoon we were in Mrs. Coltman's room,
and her sweet baby was asleep in a funny, old-
fashioned, high-backed crib. Although the sound
of exploding bullets was to be heard outside the
house, we were much startled to feel one — you
can't see them, they come so fast — enter the room,
hit the headpiece of the baby's crib, detaching it
from the main part, and bury itself in the opposite
wall. An inch lower and it would have cut through
the baby's brain. His mother picked him up, and
all of us flew into a room on the other side of the

62 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

house, where we felt we would be free from shot, at
any rate coming from that direction.

We were accompanied by the wife of the
Chief, Mrs. ^ Conger , conspicuous for her concise
manner, and an open follower of Mrs. Eddy. She
earnestly assured us that it was ourselves, and not
the times, which were troublous and out of tune,
and insisted that while there was an appearance of
warlike hostilities, it was reaUy in our own brains.
Going further, she assured us that there was no
bullet entering the room ; it was again but our
receptive minds which falsely lead us to believe
such to be the case. With these calming (!) ad-
monitions she retired, and I can honestly say that
we were more surprised by her extraordinary state-
ment than we were by the very material bullet
which had driven us from the room.

All women are busy sewing up sandbags to
strengthen our defence, while bullets are raining
into the compound like hailstones. A man comes
rushing to where we are working, and tells whoever
is in charge of filling the sandbags that a hundred, or
as many as possible, must be taken to such and such
a barricade, or it cannot holdout. We get snatches
of the real state of affairs very often in this way.

AUSTRIAN LEGATION ABANDONED 63

June 23.

Yesterday, the 22nd, the Austrian marines
vacated their Legation, although Von Rostand, the
Austrian Chargd d'AfFaires, and other people
greatly criticized them for having left too soon.
These marines then went to the French Legation,
and M. and Mme. von Rostand became Lady
Macdonald's guests at the British Legation. The
Belgians stayed with the Austrians until they left,
when they came to this compound, and the Belgian
Minister also became a guest at the Legation.
The Dutch compound and the Austrian compound
are still burning.

Yesterday at ten o'clock in the morning a sort
of terror, almost unaccountable, seemed to sweep
over the entire length and breadth of our lines ; the
French soldiers got in a terrible funk, left their
Legation to Boxers, fire, or anything else that
might appear, and ran all the way without stopping
to the British Legation, where they said everything
was "lost." The Germans also got the fright,
but after coming up Legation Street half-way, they
turned back, and not only took a stand in their own
Legation again, but they sent men into the deserted
French Legation and kept it manned, so that if the

64 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

Boxers came they would be resisted, and not be
allowed quietly to take possession.

The Russian compound is the only passage-way
by which the American marines can escape and
retire to the British Legation, and it was understood
that in case of an attack from the Chinese serious
enough to necessitate everyone leaving their
Legations, the Russians would not close their
big gate opening on Legation Street until our
American soldiers had entered, when they would
hold out there (in the Russian compound) as long
as possible, and then retreat all together to the
British Legation. Our Russian friends, however,
forgot this little arrangement, and when our men
were also seized with this panic and left the WaU,
and retreated through our Legation across Legation
Street to the Russian gate, they found it not only
locked and barred against them, but no one near
enough even to hear them knocking. They excused
themselves afterward by saying they had left a tiny
gate open farther down the street, but as none of
our people knew there was such an entrance, we
thought this a rather poor excuse.

However, in an hour's time, after this terror had
passed over the entire line, our marines had returned

FRENCH AND GERMANS 65

to the United States Legation, and had manned
the Wall again. The French returned later
to their Legation which the Germans had kindly
guarded for them in the interim, rather disheartened
to think that the scare they had started should
prove to have been only in their own overwrought
minds. As the French and German Legations
occupy two important positions, and are constantly
being attacked by Boxers and soldiers, the French
Legation could have been taken very easily by
the Chinese had the Germans not occupied both
Legations. They are directly opposite each other
in Legation Street.

Our men already have the reputation of being
the crack shots of any of the guards in Peking. It
has been noticed that when our men aim they bring
down their game — whether the game is a Chinese
soldier's head or a Boxer.

Yesterday it seemed too hard that, after the
nervous excitement and fright to everyone in the
morning. Providence did not withhold the terrible
fire that broke out almost in our very midst in the
park directly next the Wall. Each hour seemed
more terrible than the one before. A huge column
of smoke went up into the air, and in its centre

9

66 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

forked tongues of flame burst out. It seemed im-
possible that this enormous fire — one so large or so
near I have never before seen in my life — would
not in an hour or so completely burn us up. The
Boxers or soldiers who had so successfully started
it must have been overjoyed to see their work,
knowing it would take almost superhuman power
to put it out, although I am sure they could not
have thought it possible that we could extinguish it.

There was little enough hope written on people's
faces in our compound to make us feel, for a time
at least, that perhaps the Chinese might be suc-
cessful, and by burning one wall that played so im-
portant a part in our defence, they could enter and
massacre us without having to attempt an attack
by scaling. Had there been a wind blowing this
enormous column of fire in our direction, we could
not have fought it at all, and the entire long wall
which divides the British Legation from the Em-
press-Dowager's carriage park would have fallen.

Our men scaled ladders and worked like New
York firemen in the way they strove together and
in the good sense they exhibited. I suppose man
is able to keep his head clear when he knows that
this may be his last chance in this world to save

QUENCHING THE FIRE 67

his skin from Chinese savages, and that his arm
develops in consequence a good deal of strength.
Men who were on top of the wall, throwing down
buckets of water on the fire, and handling with as
mucTi care as possible the small rubber pipe that
we are using as a hose, came down every fifteen
minutes, to be relieved by others, for they were
half scorched, some badly burned from cinders and
falling ddbris, and all of them had lost their breath
in that terrible heat.

It must be remembered that while these men
were on this wall they were beautiful targets for
Chinese sharp-shooters, and we found afterwards
there were many in the Chinese troops. There
were three wells in the compound, and from the two
biggest there was a line of men and women passing
buckets, ewers, and any other kind of vessel that
was available, filled with water, to the men who
were actually fighting the fire on the wall, One
realizes the heroism it takes to continue working
at a fire though half scorched, but what shall one
say of these men who worked under the ordinary
danger of a scorching fire, and who knew they were
the target for the continuous rifle-fire and sniping
that was kept up throughout ? The sky was grey,

68 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

and the men on the Wall made agonizingly big and
black silhouettes for the Chinese to aim at.

If I live to be a thousand, I could never see a
queerer collection of people working together to
extinguish a fire, and with the object to save
themselves from a massacre — coolies, missionaries,
soldiers, and Ministers Plenipotentiary working and
straining every muscle for the same object. Surely
Peking never before saw such unanimity of her
foreign residents. I was in that hne of men and
women passing buckets, and so was the wife of
the French Minister, and many other well-known
women.

Fargo Squiers, Dr. Martin, and Dr. Poole,
surgeon for the British Legation, were three soot-
covered people who came to our rooms after the
fire was entirely out, — which meant they had
worked desperately for many hours without
stopping. To say they were thirsty would not be
truthful — they were parched. Dr. Poole whispered
that the only cup he knew big enough to quench
his thirst was a big loving-cup that was in a
small closet in a corner of the room (this house
having been his before the siege), and that if I would
fill it with ApoUinaris he would put in the whisky.

MRS. R. S. HOOKER

To face page 68

PRINCE CHING 69

1 filled my order, and he poured out about four
fingers of Scotch into the bottom of that big loving-
cup, and as he drank it slowly, holding it by both
hands, I thought I had never seen such thankful
eyes as were his during that long and pleasant well-
earned drink.

Again to-day thousands of sandbags have been
made by the women. Shooting continues all the
time, and to-day a cannon was fired from the Ch'ieii
Men Gate, which we hope may mean that our
troops are coming and the Chinese resisting them.
Prince Ching is supposed to have under his com-
mand in China fifty thousand troops, and he must
be friendly to us, or we feel he would have ordered
half of his troops to Peking before this to finish us.
It is stated that some of them have shot at the
Boxers, but this is hardly credible. Prince Ching is
a Prince of the first Order, and head of the Tsung-li
Yamen. Dr. Morrison i s the most attractive at our
impromptu mess ; he works wherever a strong man
is needed, and he is as duty, happy, and healthy a
hero as one could find anywhere.

June 24.

Two weeks ago to-day the troops started from
Tien-tsin. Yesterday by 11.30 a.m. the Hanlin

10

70 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

Library, directly behind Sir Claude's house in the
compound, was fired by the Chinese, and the way
we fought the flames I described yesterday, only
perhaps the men felt a little stronger. They have
succeeded once in putting out an enormous fire, so
why should they not be able to do so to-day?
This time, however, the wind was against us, so
that from the morning until seven o'clock at night
we were fighting it desperately.

How absurd it is to have any " consideration " for
people like the Chinese I After the big and
dangerous fire of the day before yesterday, the com-
mittee on fortifications and defences suggested that
the world-famous Chinese College (the ^Hanl in
■ Library) should be burnt by us in such a way that
the Chinese could not use it as a position to fire
on us from. There was danger, too, that they would
fire it themselves, taking it for granted that the fire
would surely spread to such an extent — aided by
themselves with kerosene — as to burn this entire
end of the Legation. The Defence Committee
was afraid of this, and at a conference of the
Ministers it was discussed, and more or less unani-
mously disapproved of. " Such vandalism !" they
said. "This trouble will soon be over, and then what

THE HANLIN LIBRARY 71

a disgrace to have to acknowledge to the world
that we deUberately burnt one of the finest, if not
the finest, libraries in the East !" We only had to
wait twenty-four hours to see that our consideration
for the famous library was thoroughly thrown away,
for, notwithstanding the troubles " will be over in a
few days," the Chinese seem so anxious to destroy
us before these troubles have passed that they
themselves burned this gorgeous old library, con-
taining as it did all their oldest and most revered
literature, in the hope that they could burn out a
large enough part of our Wall to facilitate their
getting in.

The great danger was over by seven o'clock, but
careful sentries watched all night in case a strong
wind should start, and small isolated buildings were
burning all night, so that, looking down from our
house to that end of the compound, it made one
think of the blazing flames one sees at night in the
oil districts of Pennsylvania. With these terrible
fires the Chinese are clever enough to keep up a
volley of rifle-fire, so our labour is a frightful danger
to every man working. The suspense was hard to
bear, because it was over five hours before the most
optimistic dared say, " We are comparatively out of

72 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

danger ;" and nobody knew just what would happen
if this end of the compound was to go, for this
British compound is looked upon by all as the
strongest and last resort in Peking, and that is why,
of course, all of the women and children and stores
of every description have already been sent here.

Twenty-five Chinese Sisters, who were rescued
from the Nan-t'ang, come to our tiny little court-
yard at the back of our house — on which charming
view, by the way, our windows look — and cook
in a big caldron their portion of rice that is allowed
them by the General Committee. These people and
all of the families of Mrs. Coltman's " boys," and
Mrs. Squiers's " boys," fill up our tiny backyard with
their cooking, etc., until, from the propinquity of
these people, one is almost convinced that one is
living and sleeping in the heart of the Chinese
settlement of San Francisco.

The marines at our Legation, who naturally will
not come here until they are forced to, are in a very
bad way about food. From May 29, when they
arrived in Peking, they were fed by a Chinaman
who contracted to feed them all at so much per
man, and he fed them splendidly, but since we
have been besieged he naturally has no market to

FEEDING THE MARINES 73

call upon, Mr. Squiers has fed them for some days
out of his own storeroom, but each meal makes a
terrific hole in his supplies. There are fifty men
and two officers, and naturally they do not get
satisfied on one tin of sardines and a loaf of bread.
We have cooked rice in great quantities, putting
many tins of corned beef into it, cooking it in
the same big caldron that the Sisters use. Pre-
paring the food over here makes it very difficult
getting it to them, as there is constant sniping
going on, and it is extremely dangerous to walk
fi'om one Legation to another.

June 25.

So far the moral of the Legation, or, I should
say, of this compound, is decidedly good. The
weather is very warm, but the heavy rains that
generally come at this time of summer are not here
yet. Only a few babies are sick with dysentery, and
there are some cases of scarlet fever and malignant
malaria. The hospital, a house of four rooms, only
holds a comparatively small number of patients.
Let us pray it will not have time to fill up. Dr.
Velde, a surgeon of the German army, who has
been detailed for three years to the Legation in
Peking, is a man who for very clever and con-

74 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

secutive work has already been decorated by his
Emperor. His forte is surgery, and it looks as if
he would save the medical day here in Peking.
Dr. Poole, I think, will consult and work with him.
One of our marines has already been killed, and
two are at the hospital wounded. These people,
who are the first to lose their lives and get hurt,
make one feel that truly this is war.

I was at the hospital with Mrs. Squiers this morn-
ing. Several men were brought in, and they all
had to wait their turn to be operated on, and the
two nurses were so busy assisting with the work in
connection with the operation of the moment that
nothing was done for a wounded Cossack who was
laid on the floor. He was covered with blood, and
it trickled down his chest and formed into a pool
all around him, his face an olive-green — the colour
one sees in unskilfully painted pictures of death —
so livid, I never believed even dying people could
look that way. He lay there for some time, every-
one in authority too busy except to tell me to do
what I could for him, and keep the flies from bother-
ing him until he should die, probably in twenty
minutes. He was shot through the lungs.

People continue to be cheerful, but it is strange

DR. MORRISON AND COL. SHIBA 75

considering that we have death around us morning,
noon, and night. The gossip, if one can so call the
reports and rumours that are circulating throughout
the compound nearly every few hours, is that a
Russian declares he knows their troops are coming,
because during the night a sentry saw a green
rocket go up into the sky. It is supposed that the
Chinese have no green rockets ; therefore, as the
Russians constantly use green rockets, it must be a
signal from the Russian troops to let us know they
are practically at the door. And so on and so forth.
To-day Dr. Morrison went over to the Fu, where
the Chinese Christians are, to assist Colonel Shiba
in some difficult and dangerous barricading work,
and incidentally to take a part in a sortie. He was
in command of a squad of Japanese and Italian
soldiers, the latter most ineffective, and the former
magnificent. They cleared the Chinese out of some
alleys which Colonel Shiba decided must be added
to their lines for the protection of the Chinese con-
verts. The brunt of the fighting fell on the
Japanese, and one was killed and three wounded.
Such a clever idea it was of Dr. Morrison's and
Dr. H. James's to put these poor wretches in Prince
Su's park, which, owing to its close proximity to

76 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

the Japanese Legation, seems now to fall upon the
Japanese to defend.

Dr, H. James met with such a terrible end
yesterday ! From the gate of the British Legation
facing the canal, he looked down towards the
Imperial Wall, and seeing there several Chinese
officers carrying a regimental flag with which he
was familiar, he started out, as if on the impulse of
the moment, to parley with them. He was watched
with breathless interest. Although from the time
he left our wall until he reached them he held his
hands up to show he was unarmed, they grasped
him in the fiercest way, dragging him over the
bridge beyond our range of vision. The horror of
his too probable fate is hanging Uke a pall over the
compound. We cannot understand how a man,
knowing the Chinese as weU as he does, could
have been so mistaken in their character as to trust
himself to them with such confidence.

During the two fires in the Mongolian Market
Place and in the Hanlin University a great many
Chinese were shot by us, and when possible we
straightway threw their bodies into the flames.
Unfortunately, some Boxers were captured during
the almost hand-to-hand fighting that has taken

MR. CHESHIRE AND THE CORPSES 77

place, and confined in this compound. They were
all shot at dawn this morning.

Captain Myers has been in command for two
days and two nights on the Tartar Wall, with no
sleep. This afternoon the marine quarters in the
United States Legation caught fire and for a time
it looked as if the whole American compound would
go, but with hard fighting it was put out.

Mr. Cheshire, of the United States Legation,
is willing to take the most difficult and dangerous
work wherever an interpreter is needed, and for some
nights now he has been on the Tartar Wall direct-
ing and encouraging the picked Chinamen forming
the gang of labourers who nightly help our marines
to strengthen the barricades. Many Chinamen
who advance towards our lines too rashly, are
killed every night, and after hours of this work the
number of corpses that accumulate is astounding.
For the sake of the health of the community, Mr.
Cheshire has to spend much of his time superin-
tending his gangs in throwing dead bodies over the
Wall, and to-day he facetiously remarked he thought
he should be dubbed Major-General of the Corpses,
as he comes in touch with so many. Such gruesome
tales as these do we hear and talk of daily !

78 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

June 26.

Yesterday afternoon, at four, five gorgeously
costumed Imperial Standard bearers appeared on
the bridge in Legation Street with a flag of truce,
saying the Emperor would send later a despatch to
the bridge for us to read, and that there was in
consequence an armistice. It was brought later,
and it read : " The Emperor desires the Ministers
to be protected. Therefore, firing must cease, and
a despatch will be handed to them later on the
bridge." It was apparently not brought ; but on
seeing some mounted Chinese officers belonging to
Jung Lu's regiment passing over the Imperial
bridge, we haUed them with a white flag, and with
some soldiers to back up the meaning of the flag,
we spoke to them long enough to find that they
were going the rounds of this part of the town,
telling their people not to shoot this night on us, as
there was an armistice. We told them to send the
Emperor's letter or despatch (which has not yet
arrived on the bridge) to the British Legation.
They promised that it should be brought to us, but
it has not yet arrived at noon to-day.

Last night I was talking to M. Pichon, the
French Minister, when the French Interpreter of

HOW LONG CAN WE LAST ? 79

Legation came up to us in great excitement, saying
the Russian officers had heard, without any possible
doubt, les sonneries du canon of the Russian troops.
It is in this way we hear so many tales that one is
lost when one tries to think. The captains of aU
nationalities have had a council of war, and they
agree that with great care and hard work we can
hold our own for eight or ten days longer, but after
that we are lost.

Mrs. Coltman, the mother of six lovely children,
was speaking of the impossibilities of clean linen or
having any washing done. " But after all," she
said, "what does it matter? If the troops come
within ten days, my children can wear what they
are wearing ; if Peking is not relieved within that
time, we will all be dead," She was not melo-
dramatic, but spoke very quietly. A hundred other
remarks of this sort that one hears daily go to show
how the people reaUy feel about our condition.
Women with husbands and children suffer horribly.
They dread lest their children may die of disease
or by torture, as certainly would be the case if the
Chinese get in — as they are notoriously cruel and
without mercy even to babies — and fear for their
husbands, who may be killed during any attack.

80 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

At one o'clock this morning a terrific firing began,
apparently coming from all sides at once, which
proved to be the case later, when the oflftcers in
charge of the defence compared notes. At this
Legation the air hummed with buUets, but the
noise was so frightful one could not tell if all the
Legations were being attacked or just the British.
They tried to frighten us, and they certainly suc-
ceeded with women, children, and some men, but,
thank heavens, the oflficers in charge of defending
us and the sentries — most of them, at least — know
that our high walls and strong barricades are our
safety, and that, unless good and well-aimed artillery
is brought to shell them down, with our soldiers
and soldier-sailors to man them, it will be hard for
the Chinese to get over the Wall and end our lives.

It all seems Hke a story from the Middle Ages
to be able to place such confidence in the strength
and manning of our waUs. Certainly the foreign-
drilled Chinese soldiers must be down at Tien-tsin,
and we are owing our present immunity from
properly aimed artillery-fire to the fact that the
Chinese gunners here are utterly incompetent.

After this fiendish attack had been in progress
long enough for everyone to get up and dress,

A QUESTION OF DRESSING 81

Mrs. Conger came back to our room, and her manner
was more than tragic when she saw me lying on my
mattress on the floor, not even beginning to dress
for what I suppose half of the women in the com-
pound believed to be the beginning of the final
fight. She said: "Do you wish to be found un-
dressed when the end comes 1" It flashed through
my mind that it made very little difference whether
1 was massacred in a pink silk dressing-gown, that
I had hanging over the back of a chair, or whether
I was in a golf skirt and shirt waist that I was in
the habit of wearing during the day hours of this
charming picnic. So I told her that for some
nights I had dressed myself and sat on the edge of
the mattress wishing I was lying down again, only
to be told, when daylight came, that the attack was
over, when it was invariably too late for anything
Uke sleep (which way of living is distinctly trying),
and after a week of it, when one has so much to do
in the day hours, I had come to the conclusion that,
as it was absolutely of no benefit to anyone my
being dressed during these attacks, I was going to
stay in bed unless something terrible happened,
when I should don my dressing-gown and, with a
pink bow of ribbon at my throat, await my massacre.

11

82 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

This way of looking, or I should rather say of
speaking, did not appeal to the Minister's wife, but
I must say that at such terrible moments during
the siege it is a great comfort to be frivolous. By
making beheve that one is not afraid one really
lessens one's own fear. " Assume a virtue if you
have it not," says our beloved Shakespeare. After
Mrs. Conger's visit on this same terrible, ear-deafen-
ing night came Clara, Mrs. Squiers's German nursery
governess, and she needed all sorts of assurances to
convince her that a massacre was not in progress
at that very moment.

These attacks are very terrifying, and to talk to a
person two feet away one has to shriek. People
one sees are either apparently most optimistic or
desperately pessimistic, nothing between. It is a
horrid thing to see big, strong men unable to hide
their innate cowardliness, and shirking all duty of
the slightest personal danger.

Friday, June 29.

One or two days have passed without my opening
my diary, but they are very much like the days
that I have already written about. The weather
is very warm, but all able-bodied men are working
desperately hard over trenches, bomb-proofs and

VAIN RUMOURS 83

barricades, or putting out more fires that have
started at different places. Several attacks are
constantly being made in opposite parts of our
lines, with perhaps one big general attack in
the afternoon and one during the night, which
causes great excitement and sometimes great fear
in everybody's heart. Then comes more excite-
ment when the rumour arrives that a big fire is
breaking out in the French and American Lega-
tions, or we hear that someone, who has just come
from one of these I^egations, says that he has
heard the officer say they probably cannot hold out
much longer, with fire to fight as well as the
Chinese, and in ten minutes the report is all over
the compound that these Legations have been
abandoned, and half of the soldiers defending them
killed. Such a quantity of rumours that are circula-
ting every day, only to be denied and proved un-
true an hour later ! It is incredible !

In the case of the Legations who are still hold-
ing their own, it is very hard on the women whose
husbands are still staying with the soldiers until they
finally evacuate. These poor women naturally
wonder, " What is my husband doing ? Is he dead,
and when they evacuate will he be amongst the

84 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

lucky number to retire to the British compound
ahve ?"

Hard work is kept up on the important barri-
cades, and men do hours and hours of manual
labour. The women make thousands of sandbags
daily, and help at the hospital, and make short
rations go as far and look as attractive as possible
under the circumstances. The only strong men in
the compound who have no special work to do are
Ministers Plenipotentiary. There is no head-work
to be done now, and some of them don't take
kindly to physical work.

The British Legation Library is a complete one,
and occasionally some inquisitive soul will go to it
and try to find, compared with other sieges and
massacres, what place this one will have in history.
The nearest similar harrowing siege seems to be
that of Lucknow, where a heterogeneous multitude,
closed up in the Residency, were holding out
against fearful odds in expectation of relief by
Havelock's Highlanders, resolved to die of starva-
tion rather than surrender, for in surrendering the
fate of Cawnpore awaited them ; and in thinking of
these things we recollect that the Tartar rulers of
China are of the same tribal family as the Great

TARTAR AND MANCHU 85

Mogul, who was the head of the Indian Sepoy
Mutiny. But the King of Delhi was trying to
regain his throne, whereas the Empress Dowager
has no such excuse in making war on practically all
the nations of the civilized world.

The Tartars and Manchus are an alien race,
although the rulers of China for many centuries,
and have always been inimical to everything which
tends to increase the power of foreigners ; whereas
the Chinese are cleverer, from being so constantly
in contact with Europeans on the sea-coast, or any-
where where they can find gain or advantage in
trading with them, and have become, compared, at
least, to the ruling Manchus in Peking, pro-
gressive and modern. The Emperor and his party
for progress were completely snowed under in
1898 by the Empress-Dowager and her old Manchu
Conservatives, who, lacking the desire to accept
anything modern — even diplomatic relations of the
most simple kind — decided, in a chUdlike and un-
reasoning rage, that everything foreign must be
swept down into the sea, and it really looks now as
if the first steps of her policy may be realized.

Lady Macdonald has forty Europeans in all to
feed three times a day including servants, and at

12

86 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

table they sit down thirty-three. She is very
sensible, and has only one dish. Nobody thinks of
dressing for dinner, except the Marquis Salvage, and
I think it shows things are truly far gone when
English people dine, but do not dress.

Our little mess is very attractive, and as our stores
are much more numerous and of a greater variety
than those of almost any mess here, we manage to
have, up to the present at least, a most satisfactory
one. We have tinned beef as our piece de resistance,
and rice is our mainstay — of a necessity, as it is that
of which we have most. Tomato catsup tastes
very good in this hot weather. Oatmeal is another
staple that we have, and as luxuries we have a good
stock of jams, tinned fruits, tinned vegetables,
sardines, tinned mackerel, Liebig's extract, a big
box of Stilton cheese, coffee, tinned butter, and
white flour. Mr. Squiers has a large supply of
champagne, and every night we have one or two
quarts with our siege dinner. The men work so
hard, and the women's nerves are so much on edge,
that a small amount of stimulants is surely a
blessed help.

Our mess being comparatively small, these
delicacies are lasting nicely, as we use them with

A BLESSED ICE-BOX 87

discretion, for we remember in the old days before
the siege a dollar was a dollar, and would buy a tin,
but in these days a tin has no market value — they
cannot be bought. When one's tins are gone one
can eat horse-meat and rice. We brought a small
lead-lined ice-box with us from our Legation, which
seemed foolish at the time, but which is a great
comfort to us now. We keep our wine and
drinking-water in it, and also well-water, which is
very cool, so that our drink is somewhat cooled,
and is not the same temperature as the air. No
other mess can attempt to have things cool,
and this is one of the features of our room —
that we are as comfortable as we can be under
these extraordinary circumstances. During this
sizzhng weather cool water is a great comfort. It
is so hot that a tin of meat, if left open all night,
spoils by morning.

There is an English newspaper-man, who, when
he can spare a few moments from the siege-work,
gets his camera and takes a few photographs of
things as they are. He is fond of chaffing,
and to-day the Committee on Fortifications are
of opinion that the house used by the French
Minister, M. Pichon, is being undermined by

88 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

the Chinese from outside, though indistinct noises,
etc., are as yet the only proof of it. The Minister
was more than usually perturbed about this new
personal danger, and was not pleased, or at all
amused, at the remarks addressed him. " I am
making photographs for the Paris Figaro of this
siege. Very soon your quarters will be blown up
by dynamite. My camera is ready to take the
photographs, and as you will be the principal person
in it, how would you prefer me to take you — as
your Excellency is going up wholesale, or as you
are coming down retail ?"

At this time people are not well-balanced, it
seems to me. Some take the daily horrors as a
matter of course, are more callous than they should
be, and the others are so miserably pessimistic and
mournful that one shuns them, fearing to catch
this infection. There is a young man here who
has been known to indulge in temporary aberra-
tions, usually at night, following long, hard days of
work in the broiling sun. On one occasion he was
on his sentry beat, and on being relieved by his
chief, the sight of whom was too much for him
after having walked some hours on his dangerous
sentry route (which seemed doubly dangerous in

A NARKOW ESCAPE 89

the pitch-black night) he, doubtless brooding over
his probable approaching death, pointed the muzzle
of his gun straight at his relief, " C'est k cause de
vous, miserable, que je suis venu k Pdkin et encore
c'est k cause de vous que ces belles anndes de ma
jeunesse seront salement termin^es ici !" By not
moving an inch the man thus threatened un-
doubtedly saved his life, and most intelligently
agreed with his attacker, " Probably so ; let's talk it
over." In a few minutes the crisis had passed, but
the following day the man who had been in such
danger requested the General Committee to change
his night sentry duty to a different part of the
compound, so that his young secretary should not
again be tempted to hold him responsible.

Sunday, July 1.

I have been quite under the weather, to use a
civilized expression, and I assure you that things
have got (not are getting) to such a state that to live
and act and talk as one would do at home is quite
out of place. How soon people get accustomed
to an idea ! Now that we have prepared our minds
for a possible massacre we seem to be getting back,
to some degree at least, our old spirits. Now that

90 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

I am well, how much nearer seem the soldiers whq
are coming to relieve us 1

What a place this compound would be for an
epidemic ! There are barely enough mattresses for
the wounded and dying at the hospital, so that,
should we have one, and take a house for those
taken sick, I am sure that there would be no
ordinary comforts of any kind for them ; they could
only be isolated. Let us pray that we will have
no such horror to add to the already long list.

The hospital is already full, men lying on straw
bags in halls — crowded in every conceivable corner.
They are brought in dying and wounded every
day. Dysentery has its grip on almost every-
body here. The treatment is almost to stop eating
and to drink rice-water in large quantities. Our
four-times-divided cook — the other three messes in
the United States bungalow have a lien on him
too — is off for some hours daily on work which
all personal servants have to give to the General
Committee. When the kitchen is comparatively
free, Mrs. Squiers, my maid, and I make gallons of
rice-water, thick, nutritious but tasteless, which we
bottle in quart-bottles and place to cool in our zinc-
lined, cold-water-filled box. It is placed in a corner

THE PEKING SMELL 91

of our two-roomed quarters, and the constant stream
of men coming and going to that box would lead
an uninitiated observer to believe that at least a
Hoffman House bar was hidden there and doing a
steady business.

The rainy season and the bad time of the year
par excellence has begun, and the temperature is
like a Turkish bath without the clean smell.
Apropos of smeU, a whole story-book could be
written about the Peking smell. The dry heat
was nothing compared with this damp temperature,
that seems to soak out of Mother Earth the most
incredibly disgusting odours. There are so many
dead dogs, horses, and Chinese lying in heaps all
around the defended lines, but too far for us to
bury or burn them. The contamination of the air
is something almost overpowering. All men who
smoke have a cigar in their mouths from morning
untU night as a protection from this unseen horror,
and even the women, principally Italians and
Russians, find relief in the constant smoking of
cigarettes.

On the 29th Dr. Lippitt, who came up from
Taku with our marines, was sitting in front of the
Minister's house smoking a cigarette, when a bullet

92 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

struck a limb of a tree near by, and, glancing down,
struck him in the thigh, fracturing the bone. He is
most dangerously ill, and we shall not know for
several days whether he will have to have his leg
amputated or not. He is an attractive man and a
thorough Virginian. We used to play tennis with
him and Captain Myers before the times got so
terribly out of joint.

To-day the Germans were driven off the Tartar
Wall close to their Legation, which caused a great
deal of excitement. They were driven off by
Chinese soldiers, some of whom were Tung Fu-
hsiang's men, and others were Prince Ching's
especial troops, which seems queer, as we have
supposed all along that Prince Ching was friendly.

The Germans could see from the Wall that the
Ha Ta Men Gate is being strengthened, and people
who know say that the troops who are closing the
gates in such a warlike way are doing it as much
against the violent and uncontrolled soldiers of
Tu Fu-hsiang, who are notorious for the manner in
which they loot and murder, as against the allied
Powers. They say that all Chinese families in
Peking who have anything to lose have left the
capital, as they realize that if the foreign troops

A PANIC ON THE WALL 93

come there will be great looting, and if the Chinese
troops are successful there will be looting and
worse. Mr. Pethick tells me that during the Japan-
China War, when it was considered highly probable
that the Japanese would march on to the capital,
thousands of Mandarins and people of wealth left
Peking with their families and with as much treasure
as they could carry. It is natural to suppose that
the same fright exists to-day.

This morning our men, the Germans following,
retired in a panic from their barricades on the
Wall to the United States Legation, momentarily
expecting to see Chinese hordes occupy the German
position and theirs. After an hour's wait they
retook the Wall. This example, however, was not
followed by the Germans. During this hour the
excitement was intense in the British compound.
The report that the Wall had been evacuated
caused a panic, for this abandonment of the
Wall would enable the Chinese to mount their
guns on this portion of it, directly commanding
the British Legation, and to fire down on us, and
no one can say how long we could hold out against
such an attack. In such an event we will put
women and children into deep bomb-proofs that

94 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

have been made for that purpose, which are covered
with logs, sandbags, and dirt, and are shell-proof.
These trenches we have made as near as possible
like those used in the siege of Ladysmith.

As the Germans have been unable to regain their
positions on the Wall, the difficulty for Uncle Sam's
men has been increased fifty per cent., as they must
now be prepared at all times, either during the day or
night, for an attack by Chinese from both directions.
This sentence, "to give up the Wall,"could be, trans-
lated into siege language, "the beginning of the end,"
and this news was most terrifying to us. I think that
there are few who in their heart of hearts have given
up hope of the troops coming soon. Nevertheless, the
facts remain that if we cannot hold the place it
would not take very long for us to be annihilated,
and if the troops come a day after we are finished,
a miss is as good as a mile, and we don't care then
when they come. If we had not had the greatest
luck in the world we could never have held out like
this to the present date, and what the Powers can
be thinking about not to send a column to our
immediate relief, knowing, as they must, that we
could never hold out against artillery, is beyond the
reasoning power of the people in this Legation.

COLONEL SHIBA 95

Are the allied Powers fighting each other, or are
they fighting their way up here ?

Yesterday an unsuccessful sortie was made by
Colonel Shiba from the Fu to capture a gun, and six
men were killed. These offensive measures seem
to gain us nothing, and we always lose men.

Apropos of C olonel Shiba, he is a splendid,
small person. He has taken his position here by
the strength of his intelligence and good right arm,
solely because the Ministers and the guard captains
were not especially inclined at the first morning
conference to listen to him — in fact, I don't know
that he tried to talk, but it is all changed now. He
has done so splendidly in his active and continuous
fighting in the Fu, and has proved himself such a
general, that his opinion and help are asked by all
the commanders. His men are all so patient
and untiring in their long, long hours behind the
barricades, and are so game, in great contrast to
the Italians who are with him defending the Fu.
One can only hope for Italy's sake that her soldiers
in Peking are the worst she has.

Now that we have got down to the primitive
motif of all nationalities fighting for their lives, the
racial friendships and animosities are very obvious.

96 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

The British and American are almost one people

here ; although the expressions, " D Yankees !"

and " D lime-juicers !" are interchanged, they

are used in a spirit of affection. The dislike of
the Russians for the British is so cordial that it
is only equalled by the feeling the British entertain
toward them. The frankness of this avowed
enmity is dehghtful. Our compound joins the
Russians, and they love us and we love them in
as strong a fashion as they hate their English
neighbours on their other side. Baron Von Rahden
orders his men to work and fight as much as
possible side by side vidth our marines, as in this
way he hopes to increase the efficiency of his un-
trained guard. These men can't speak the others'
language, but are the best of friends. The Russians
are all called " Rouskies " by our guard.

The Germans are somewhat by themselves,
and fraternize with no one. Their Legation is at
one end of the defended lines, and opposite the
French. They are full of sullen rage at the un-
avenged death of their Minister, and when they
are fighting or defending barricades in conjunction
with other nationalities, and perhaps under com-
mand of an American or British officer, they have

VARIOUS NATIONALITIES 97

become notorious for their utter disregard of
ordinary military precaution and unnecessary dare-
devil recklessness. The French are also far from
the base of the defended area, and come in for
attacks. They are assisted by the Austrian guard,
some Belgians, some Customs students and un-
attached Continentals who are able to use a gun.
The Customs students constitute a splendid force
of young men, but as they are of all nationalities,
they are apt, in taking their active fighting posi-
tions, to gravitate to the guards of their respective
countries, although in many instances they simply
join the weakest spot. The Japanese are defending
the Fu with the greatest valour, and, needless to
say, are tremendously pro - English and anti-
Russian.

We now feel that our tactics must be entirely
defensive. Although to-day is Sunday, most of
the women in the compound, missionary women
included, are working hard at sewing sandbags,
the non-fighting men filling them. Beautiful
material of all kinds is being used for these bags.
Liberty satin curtains from London and linen
monogrammed sheets from Paris are cut up ruth-
lessly to be used. One hundred thousand bags, as

13

98 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

near as they can be counted, have been made
already. It was principally in the Fu, defended
by gallant Colonel Shiba, that the materials pro-
cured were so gorgeous. Bags were made from
the bolts and roUs of brocades and satins that con-
stituted part of the treasure left by Prince Su in
his palace when he so kindly turned it over to his
persecuted fellow-citizens. This is the one bright,
wonderful bit of colouring in the compound : it
is the barricades of thousands of big sandbags
made entirely of these gorgeous-coloured satin
brocades — sky-blues, blood-red. Imperial yellows —
thousands and thousands piled one upon the other.
It has been built from the ground up to the
second story of the Chancery building — a rather
high house for Peking. It was made at this build-
ing, as the firing has been very heavy here — a
most extraordinary, butterfly-coloured barricade;
and if it were anywhere in the world except in this
siege in Peking, there would be seen lines of artists,
with sketch-book and easel, trying to put this
unusual e fleet on canvas.

Tuesday, July 3.

For several days past the Chinese on the Tartar
Wall have been bolder and bolder, and yesterday

THE CHINESE DRAWING IN 99

they built their last barricade so near ours that they
could, and did, throw big rocks over into our hnes,
which, by a lucky chance, hurt no one. The moral
effect of this dangerous propinquity was terrible
on our men. They felt that there was only one
almost ineffective barricade between them and
hordes of Tu Fu-hsiang's soldiers— the notoriously
cruel Mohammedan chief and his bandits. Mr.
Squiers was the first to appreciate this great danger,
and certainly the first to think of the cure, and,
what was more to the point, he put it through.
The pros and cons were discussed with Sir Claude in
conference, and it was decided that a charge down
the Wall must be made, and soon, or else we must
leave it entirely, and that none of the Americans
were willing to do, as we had been there from the
beginning, and although the Germans gave up their
position on the Wall, we were not content to do
the same.

Captain Myers was more than ready to lead the
charge, and he was given twenty British marines,
fifteen Russians, and thirty of our own men. At
dawn this morning, about three o'clock, he charged
the Wall. No one in the compound had gone to
bed ; the excitement was very great. We sent

100 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

sixty of our fighting men on this sortie, and if they
faUed we should have lost what we could ill afford
to lose. We felt that the odds were about even, and
that waiting at the hour of dawn was frightful. The
charge was successful, and two Chinese regimental
flags were captured. Sixty-five dead Chinese soldiers
were afterwards found between the two barricades,
but the actual number killed and wounded is un-
known. Our men came back at five o'clock carry-
ing their dead and wounded. This has been the
only effectual offensive measure accomplished
during the siege. Captain Myers led it most
gallantly — an inspiration to his men — and was
wounded by a spear-thrust in the leg.

Thursday, July 5.

The Glorious Fourth came in during the last
twenty-four hours, and the Chinese kindly an-
nounced the fact about 3 o'clock a.m. by a violent
firing from all sides, which terrified everybody, but
hke most of the similar attempts recently made,
only resulted in giving everyone a bad fright, and
materially weakening some one or two points of our
defence. Von Below, of the German Legation,
notwithstanding his military physique, seems to be

CAPTAIN JOHN T. MYERS

To face page loo

MUSIC AND MASSACRE 101

developing into a man of moods instead of a man
of action, and the story comes over from his
quarters that during this last terrifying attack he
was seized with the premonition that this was the
end. He preferred to meet his doom by making his
piano interpret his last feeling. The music from
the " Valkyrie " that he drew from that instru-
ment was marvellous. He played, regardless of
time and place, in a soul agony, but was rudely
awakened some hours later to be told that the
attack was all over, and that for this time at least
he was not to be massacred in a storm of music.

To-day the moral atmosphere seems worse. I
think that it is because absolutely nothing has
reached us from the outside world to let us know
that our respective Governments care what becomes
of us. My personal attitude, compared with my
co-besieged friends, is one of extraordinary cheerful-
ness, simply because, perhaps owing to my youth
and health, I can feel no terrible fear for the future,
but, on the contrary, am distinctly hopeful.

All the hope that has been caused by seeing
nightly green lights that look hke search-lights is
falling very low, because they have not got nearer
at all, which would not be the case were they

14

102 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

signals used by our approaching troops. Where
can the troops be ? Are aU the Governments so
gullible as to believe the Chinese Ministers in
their different countries, who are probably assuring
them of our safety, or can they be so criminally
selfish as to be fighting diplomatically among them-
selves as to what each Power shall have in the
way of future sharing of China after our rescue ?

The consensus of opinion among the Ministers
here is that the different nations will agree to allow
the Japanese or the Russians, who control large
fighting forces within a week's march of Peking,
to send a relief column to Peking with the sole
object of relieving their eleven Ministers Pleni-
potentiary, exacting a promise that on this ex-
pedition there should be no coup d'etat or punitive
measures, but simply relief of their distressed repre;-
sentatives. Weeks ago we were told to come to
the British compound for a day or two, but as yet
there is not a sign of help. Every day deaths occur
of our best fighting men and officers, and the
question is, with men going in this painfully regular
way, how long can we hold out ? Soon women and
children will constitute the only forces of the com-
pound. The deaths each day are fortunately small

MANY MORE DEATHS 103

in number, but a great many are wounded, some
very badly, which make them as good as dead as far
as fighting goes. The Russian officer in command
says that we cannot hold out longer than for one
week at the most, but more sanguine people say
that, with good luck, three weeks can be tided
over.

Captain Myers's wound of his spear-thrust is
not as slight as was expected, and he has much
fever. It was very sad to-day to see the funeral
of another baby. The second funeral of the day
was one of the most popular and attractive of the
Customs students. He was shot through the Hver
while cutting down a tree near the Hanlin Library,
and died two hours later.

Fifty men are in the hospital, twelve have been
killed, and there are a few convalescents walking
about the compound. We did not say so at the
time, but we can say now, thank Heaven ! the
Chinese have tried to fire us on all sides, so that in
this way there are very few places or houses where
the Chinese, who are sniping at near range, can
secure cover. By means of terrific efforts, in which
everybody joined, to extinguish the fires, serious
harm was averted, although our enormous wall.

104 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

giving on to the Mongolian Market Place, had a
breach in it that took a great deal of hard work on
the part of the men to rebuild, or, I should say, to
mend, with rocks and sandbags, in such a way as
to make it safe.

These rocks were moved with great difficulty ;
they had been in place so long forming the pave-
ments in this compound. How fortunate, from a
defensive standpoint, that when we came here we
were allowed some servants, our coolies included !
Most of these are Christians, because the Buddha
men as a rule deserted when they saw how things
were going ; and now these servants are put in
gangs, all of them having to work for the common
need in building barricades, filling the thousands
of sandbags to strengthen the defences, and doing
necessary sanitary work, also at times working
shoulder to shoulder with our soldiers when a
barricade caves in from the enemy's heavy fire.
One barricade, for instance, was destroyed by the
Chinese. The coolies, working with the soldiers,
rebuilt it, though exposed to a galling fire from Tu
Fu-hsiang's men all the time. One afternoon six
coohes were killed.

These men, whom we call by the general term

OLIPHANT'S FUNERAL 105

of "coolie," classing them thus for convenience,
are often scholars, being teachers of Chinese to
the missionaries or interpreters, and yet they work
without complaint in the gangs, though they are
in every way unaccustomed to manual labour.

At four o'clock we had another funeral, for
Oliphant, who was shot. I was present, and the
English chaplain, Mr. Norris, gave us a short
service. It was very sad to see his body, wrapped
only in a piece of sacking, let down into the
ground. The grey sky, occasional bullets flying
over our heads, and a few claps of thunder, with
flashes of lightning, made a fitting background
for the burial of this lovable young man. His
brother, a great tall, gaunt feUow, looked his part
in the most pitiful way as chief mourner. Before
we leave Peking many wiU be the Chinamen who
wiU be killed without quarter by the Customs
students in revenge for the untimely death of their
comrade. All the Ministers Plenipotentiary were
there, and poor Sir Robert Hart looked weak and
haggard from deep grief at the loss of his favourite
subordinate. Oliphant was buried only three
hours after his death. We have no way of
keeping the dead for a greater length of time.

106 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

Horse is the principal article of diet. Several
days after we arrived here the beef was eaten up,
and there remained but a small flock of sheep,
which fortunately was brought here while there
was time. There are 1,293 Europeans to feed
daily in this compound, and rice is the dish par
excellence for everyone. Mutton, however, is dis-
tributed to the sick, women and children, to the
extent of a quarter of a pound apiece every third
day. There are a lot of horses, ponies, and
mules in the compound which we have kept
ahve by feeding with straw, and every day two
animals have been slaughtered and distributed
among the messes. Then the cooUes have a
kitchen, where they can come whenever their work
makes it possible, and they get rice and horse-meat.
It is queer to see how many people acknow-
ledge that they like it, having eaten it now for
two weeks. Of course, a great deal depends
upon the animal, but they agree that mule and
pony are better than horse. Some people even
who have among their stores plenty of canned
or tinned beef prefer the fresh horse-meat. At
our mess, however, we have a prejudice against
it, and as long as we continue to have the

PRECIOUS "MISS COW" 107

tinned beef we will not send for our share of the
animal.

The May races having come off before the siege,
most of the diplomats had not disposed of their
horses and polo ponies, and the all-important ques-
tion now is not if " Coehon " will win more cups
in future, but if his steaks will be tender. Things
are so queer now. The one cow which still gives
a small amount of milk, needless to say, has not
been killed for her beef, but is carefully tended
for her baby-saving fluid. The president of the
largest and most influential bank in Peking,
besieged here with us, has received a wound which
absolutely incapacitates him for active work. He
can only hobble around on a crutch. He has
volunteered to tend "Miss Cow" and assist her
to find the few blades of grass which are still to
be had.

I went with an officer to the Hanlin Library,
where the sniping is stUl constant, but not quite
as severe as it was, owing to the good barricades
with which we have strengthened the position.
The Chinese fired this wonderful library of Peking
so ruthlessly that nothing is left there but thou-
sands of charred and burnt books, and some

108 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

evidences of the charming courtyard and grass
plot where the old Chinese savants used to go
and read the ancient manuscripts in Sanskrit and
other dead languages. Here I found the bank
president, a great power in China in ordinary
times, quietly tending the cow, watching her from
an antique stone bench. Surely the shade of some
ancient philosopher must be shocked into asking
himself, " And what have we here ?"

The Customs mess at Sir_BAbe*t,.S^i^ has an
invariable menu. At breakfast, rice, tea, and jam ;
at tiffin, rice and horse ; at dinner, rice, horse, and
jam. We have splendid stores — better than any
in the compound — so we live better than any mess
here. We have quite a supply of Bishop's won-
derful preserved California fruits, not very sweet,
which are most delicious during this hot weather,
because they do not make one thirsty ; then we
have macaroni and tinned tomatoes. We make
our corned beef into croquettes sometimes, but
generally have it put into a curry with rice.
Yesterday we had a great treat for dinner. Our
cook, who is an enterprising and daring soul,
went outside of our Unes into the Mongol markets
at great risk to his life from snipers or being

OUR MESS AND MENU 109

waylaid by the enemy, and procured one dozen
tiny chickens. Sir Robert Hart came to our
party.

Menu.

Remarks.

Celery bouillon Liebig extract, celery.

Anchovy on toast ... Anchovy paste.

Broiled chicken ... ... Procured at risk of cook's life.

Green peas, fried potatoes Tinned peas and two potatoes.
Bean salad ... ... Tinned beans.

Black coffee ... ... Plenty of coffee.

The chickens remaining from the cook's raid are
being kept in a basket and fed as if they were
babies, and will be used entirely for the children.
We count eight at our mess as regular members,
but our guests are constant and numerous. Its
personnel consists of Dr. Velde (who does such
glorious surgical work), Dr. Morrison, Mr. Cheshire,
Mr. Pethick, Mr. Squiers, Fargo Squiers (who is
Captain Strouts' orderly), Mrs. Squiers (who,
because of the great generosity in freely supplying
from her limited stores those who are in need,
has been called by many in this compound the
" Lady Bountiful "), the three children and
two governesses, and myself. We usually have
missionaries in to tiffin, and our more intimate

no BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

friends, many of whom are sadly in need of food,
to breakfast and dinner.

The Russian Legation is so situated that at
one point their defence is very weak, and they have
almost nightly attacks at such close quarters with
the Chinese, that the fighting is sometimes hand
to hand. The men of the Russian guard were un-
drilled sailors, who had been forcibly enlisted from
inland villages in Russia, and Von Rahden, their
commander, and his under-officer, to keep them
from running away when these close-range fights
begin, get behind them and stick them with the
ends of bayonets, so that they in turn will advance
on the Chinese with fury. He claims that this
is the only way to teach undisciplined troops to
advance at close quarters, as they always become
seized with terror — and I don't wonder a bit, for the
Chinese in attacking blow on shriU horns, shriek,
howl, dance with the wildness of dervishes, and
advance with the cruelty and cunning of Indians.

Von Rahden is frequently up aU night, and when
he is, he usually comes to us for breakfast, which
we have at anytime between 6.30 and 8 o'clock. I
have especial charge of the cofFee-pot, and when
the members of our mess have been up all night on

-■5E_i- ^-i^^i^-- ^-_'. &

MRS. SQUIERS

To face pane no

BREAKFAST DIFFICULTIES 111

duty, they look as if they could drink it all, instead
of the one cup I have to limit them to. What a
diflference, instead of having your maid bring your
breakfast-tray in the morning when you ring for it,
to be waked up from a heavy morning nap at six
o'clock by knocking on the door, to find two or
three powder-begrimed members of your mess
humbly inquiring : " How soon will breakfast be
ready ?" They have probably been up all night on
the firing-line, and are dog-tired and faint.

We tell them to come back in half an hour, and
then our skirmish begins. The sleepy cook is
routed out of the Chinese-filled courtyard under
our windows, and told it is time to cook the
wheatena, the coffee and soda-raised biscuits, for
which purpose he repairs to the broken stove in the
box-like kitchen. We take a hasty sponge-bath,
and our rough-dried shirt-waists and golf-skirts are
donned, and we are ready for the day. Next we
roll up our straw mattress, place it in a corner, and
put the small eight-sided Chinese table in the
middle of the room. We boast four chairs, and
as our mess ranges from eight to twelve people, the
ones who come late sit on the silver trunks or on
the floor.

112 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

A fresh table-napkin we have procured from
somewhere, and on the table we place some green
leaves for decoration, and breakfast is announced.
Besides Von Rahden, another breakfast guest we
have almost daily is the Rev. Mr^Gamewell, a
missionary who appears the mildest of men, but who
is developing into one of the strongest in Peking.
He is the brains of the Defence and Fortifica-
tion Committee. Before entering the ministry he
was a star student at Cornell, in the engineering
department ; and now this entire compound and
the outer lines are included in his hands, and his
recommendation for barricades, countermining to
protect against the Chinese undermining, of which
we are constantly aware, are all carried out as near
as possible from his orders. Before dawn he is at
work to take advantage of these hours of compara-
tive quiet, to see just where the weak spots are, and
how he can best provide for their strengthening
during the coming day. He is a stooping figure,
very quiet, and rarely speaks to us, and, when he
does speak, never about what he is doing. He told
me his working hours are so continuous, and every-
body calling for him from every quarter, that he did
not believe he could keep on if it were not for the

DR. VELDE 113

hour's rest and good hot breakfast that he gets
daily in Mrs. Squiers's rooms.

Another member of the mess is Dr. Velde, the
German surgeon, who is doing such wonderful
and constant work at the hospital day and night.
He performs unheard-of operations one after
another, and on the same old kitchen table that
we foimd for him. The antique rifles used so
frequently by the Chinese inflict the most heart-
rending wounds, the treatment of which, to be
successful, surely calls for surgical genius, and,
thank Heaven I Velde has that. He is short, thick-
set, and blond, with stumpy little hands and a
keen blue eye, and is wonderfully practical and
matter-of-fact. The various messes near the
hospital asked him to join them, but without
affectation — he knows he is the only surgeon
in Peking, and he must guard his health — he
answered : " No, I go only where 1 get the best
and the most food ;" and having been asked by
Mr. Squiers to come to us, he gladly accepted, while
reiterating the same reason for joining us that he
had given for refusing the others. His duties are
so constant that he usually is only able to get in to
breakfast and dinner.

15

114 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

Another feature of this siege is one which shows
what marvellous executive ability some people
have. The proprietor of the Peking Hotel is
Chamot, a Swiss who has played a wonderful part
in the drama of our imprisonment. There have
naturally been numbers of people without stores of
any kind, and people who, if they had stores, would
have no place to cook them ; so Chamot stepped
forward and undertook to feed daily I don't know
how many people. When we were first assembled
in the British compound the confusion was some-
thing terrific, and he gave food to all those who
had nothing, and later he made a permanent busi-
ness arrangement to provide food for those who
had no means of messing themselves. Among these
are many Roman Catholic priests and twenty-five
Roman Catholic Sisters, saved by himself and his
■wife from the Nan-t'ang just before it was burned,
besides numerous families and detached individuals
having no stores, who would have had a most
serious time without his assistance.

These Sisters were fed by Mrs. Squiers for many
days before Chamot volunteered their care. Of
course, the variety that he supplies is not wonder-
ful, but he gives them horse-meat, rice, occasionally

"THE SWISS LEGATION" 115

some tinned vegetables, and a kind of coarse brown
bread, made from an inferior flour, which he bakes
himself. For so many people it is quite marvellous
how he feeds them so regularly. He has a few
coolies to help him at his hotel, which is near the
French Legation, and there he personally super-
intends the cooking of the two messes, one at
twelve and one at six o'clock, and brings it up in a
Chinese cart to the British compound, always at
the risk of his own life from snipers. One cannot
but wonder how long he will be able to continue
his good work. Chamot's Hotel in Peking is known
in the siege vernacular as the Swiss Legation.

Monday, July 9.

A day or two ago an old-fashioned cannon was
found in a shop near Legation Street, where they
made Chinese stoves — a kind of foundry. It is
undoubtedly one of the guns brought up to Peking
by the English and French in 1860. Mr. Squiers
promptly took a great interest in this ancient piece
of ordnance, hoping that we might make some use
of it. He, with Mitchell, a gunner's mate from the
Newark, have worked assiduously in their efforts to
clean off the rust of forty years and get it ready for

116 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

use. During the cleaning process they made pro-
jectiles of bags of nails. They took the " Inter-
national," as the gun was christened, over to the
Fu and fired the bags of naUs at a Chinese barri-
cade, thus serving the double purpose of cleaning
the gun and causing some damage and immense
fright to the enemy. The noise of the explosion
was so much greater than anything the Chinese had
heard coming from our lines that five sentries in-
cautiously put their heads above the Imperial WaU
to ascertain what was going on, and were promptly
shot down by our guards. Some Russian ammuni-
tion is here, intended for a gun which should have
been forwarded from Tien-tsin at the same time as
the ammunition, but which, most unfortunately.
Colonel Wogack failed to have put on the last
train, and we find it can be fired from the " Inter-
national."

To-day a European boy died of dysentery. Last
night the " International " was taken over to the
Hanlin, where it was used to great advantage in
breaking up a barricade that the Chinese had made,
and which they have been strengthening daily for
their convenience and protection while engaged in
the pleasant occupation of sniping our men. The

5ifa- .

.mt..

^^^

•■^ -'>-

LOADING THE "INTERNATIONAL'

^ofiyrtghi, M. S. IVoodivard

AMERICAN AND RUSSIAN MARINES AT WORK ON THE BARRICADE,
i BARON VON RAHDEN ON THE RIGHT

To face page ii6

M. MERGHELYNCKEM 117

day before yesterday Von Rostand, Austrian Chargd
d' Affaires, was shot at the French Legation — where,
I understand, the rifle-firing and sheUing is terrific
— somewhere near the eye, and they fear he may
lose it. His wife is nursing him there. M. Mer-
ghelynckem, the First Secretary of the Belgian Le-
gation, killed two Chinese yesterday, and in kilUng
one he undoubtedly saved the hfe of the French
commanding officer. He does good work, and is a
fine shot, but is erratic to a degree, and I don't
believe he loves his English colleagues as much as he
might. He left yesterday for the French Legation
to take up his abode there, where he surely will be
treated with great consideration, having saved the
life of their officer, although there he is given eight
hours of sentry duty, while here he had but six
hours.

The other day he brought me five long China-
men's queues, which he had cut off" the heads of
Boxers he had killed, as a souvenir of a day's work.
It means to some Chinese — the cutting-oiF of the
queue — a great and unholy mutilation, and these
trophies hanging up in our living-room for a few
days were obviously things of terror to our Chinese
servants, although they had been cut from the

16

118 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

heads of their dread enemies, and we soon disposed
of them. Yesterday the Austrian commanding
officer was killed, shot through the heart. At first
we kept a record of the dead or badly wounded
men as they would be brought into the hospital, but
now they come in so often that we cease to note
the exact number.

People — the sanguine ones — say that it is quite
likely and reasonable that help will not come for a
week or two, and in this way, if the troops do not
come, they can say, with childish satisfaction, " Oh,
I never expected them before." When we first
got here aU the Ministers and everyone said:
" Certainly by the first of July at the latest."
Now they are actually saying : " Certainly by the
first of August " !

Yesterday — Sunday — there was a lot of good
work done. Nevertheless, Mr. Norris, the chaplain,
who is one of the hard-working members of the
Committee on Fortifications, gave us half an
hour for the service held in Lady Macdonald's
dining-room — the regular chapel of the compound
being occupied by the American Protestant
missionaries — and I must say that it was com-
forting. This room is something of a wreck,

A GREAT CHANGE 119

denuded of all draperies for sandbags, walls riddled
with large and small buUet-holes, a life-sized
painting of Queen Victoria occupying the entire
wall at one end of the room, hung quite crooked
and peppered with shot. A great beam from the
ceiling protruded some 4 or 5 feet down into the
room, where it had been forced by a spent cannon-
ball crashing into the side of the house, and over
all this ruin was the unmistakable atmosphere
which clings to a room where many people eat
three times a day, and where the staflF of servants
is not equal to the work. It was but six weeks
ago that I was a guest at a most charming dinner
given in this very room, surrounded by what then
seemed to be the unutterable and interminable
calm that comes from the possession of the best
things to make life pleasant in the Far East. The
other denominations had their services as weU
some time during the day.

The hot weather began last week, and the
thermometer is 109° in the shade. I wear shirt-
waists and short skirts ; the men wear filthy clothes
that they work in and most of them sleep in.
They never wear collars — no washing of linen for
three weeks, and, from the looks of them, most of

120 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

them only shave every fourth or fifth day. Life is
now settling down to a routine, and one would
think that the people of this compound had never
done anything else all their lives but get up during
each night when a general attack begins. Each
man goes to his appointed post, or if for a change
we have no general attack, the men quietly get up
at all hours and go to their sentry work.

The Marquis Salvago sits chatting with his wife,
a very beautiful woman, in a chaise longue most of
his time. M. Pichon, the French Minister,
nervously and ceaselessly walks about, telling
every one who chats with him : " La situation est
excessivement grave ; nous allons tous mourir ce
soir." M. de Giers, the Russian Minister, walks
eternally between his Legation and the British
compound, and looks every inch a Minister. Poor
Senor Cologan, the Spanish^Minister, and doyen of
the corps, is very ill. M. Knobel, the Dutch
Minister, offered his services as a sentry to the
Committee on Defences, but stated at the same
time that he did not know how to shoot, and was
very short-sighted. Needless to say, his offer was
not accepted. Mr. Conger, the American Minister,
walks about. Sir Claude Macdonald, the British

Photo, Elliott S- Fry

SIR CLAUDE MACDONALD

To face page 120

THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 121

Minister, is now the Commander-in-Chief, unani-
mously elected to that position by his colleagues, and
he tries sincerely to do his duty as such. I believe
he is fuUy competent, as he used to be a captain in the
British army before entering the diplomatic service.
His path is a thorny one, however ; most of the
Legations are so jealous of this compound being the
centre and last stronghold par excellence, that they
ai*e outrageously inconsiderate of all orders issued,
and, notwithstanding the great gravity of the
situation, they put everything in Sir Claude's way to
keep his plans from reaching successful maturity.
A small incident may be cited to show this horrid
and prevalent spirit.

The French had put in an application with the
Committee on Fortifications for picks and shovels
to be sent to their Legation for important night
barricade work. The missionary in charge of them
at the British Legation failed to send them ; either
they were all in use on equally important work, or
there was an oversight on his part. Having failed
to receive them, Herr Von Rostand, the Austrian
Chargd, who has joined the French in their com-
pound, at twelve o'clock last night returned to the
British Legation, where he and his wife were

122 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

accepting Lady Macdonald's hospitality, and took it
upon himself to wake Sir Claude up, and insultingly
shouted that Sir Claude was responsible, and he
alone responsible ; that the French Legation was
not being properly defended, etc. (especially the
etc.). Sir Claude said that he would discuss any-
thing relative to the safety of the Legations at any
time in the proper manner, but the way that Von
Rostand spoke made it impossible for him to talk to
him at all. The Von Rostands then took up their
abode at the French Legation, which was natural
more or less, as the Austrian soldiers are helping
them.

A question going round the compound is :
When the French and German Legations must be
given up, where will the Von Rostands go ? The
fact that one is a Minister or Charg^ does not help
to find one new quarters, as every room, haU-way,
and closet, was long ago appropriated. The charm-
ing doyen of the Corps Diplomatique, the Spanish
Minister, Senor Cologan, sleeps on a mattress in
the tiny hall of the house that was given to the
French Minister for himself and official family. He
has to go to bed late and get up early because people
have to walk over him. He has a tiny shelf on

RAIN AND DISCOMFORT 123

which to put his few toilet possessions, but he sleeps
in all his clothes, as everyone sees him. The Dutch
Minister sleeps in a tiny storeroom of the very
small Second Secretary's house, that we now call
the Russian Legation, where the fifty-one people
composing M. de Giers's oflScial personnel are
housed. As this room is a storeroom, his nights
are a constant fight with cockroaches. Such is the
way rank is treated when it is a fight for life.

July 16.

A steady rain has begun that promises to last for
several days, a sure but not very heavy downpour,
and with it comes a greater number of mosquitoes
and fleas than would otherwise be the case. The
sticky black flies seem to be of a different family
from those one is accustomed to elsewhere. It is
awful to see them feasting themselves on these
filthy and ill-smelling Chinese people, half of whose
bodies are usually covered with a hundred of these
pests ; but the Chinese are so accustomed to them
that when they prepare their food they do not object
if some, or I should say a great many, get into it.
The " slaughter-house," of course, is a great centre
for these disgusting flies, and as we are only a few

124 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

doors from it, the feeling of having these beasts
swarming over everything in one's room, oneself in-
cluded, is distinctly unpleasant. To an imaginative
person, who may have been so unfortunate as to
study " The Life of the Microbe," these scavenger
flies would certainly cause him to lose his mind.

The room at the back of Dr. Poole's house,
which we occupy, is damp, and all night the fleas
and cockroaches that appear would horrify anyone.
We sent our mosquito-nets and hair-mattresses
to the hospital, so that every night we he on our
straw-stufted bag, doing duty as a mattress, on
the floor, and unless one lies in a pool of bug-
powder there is no such thing as sound sleep.
Until quite recently we had no insect-powder, and
the nights were unimaginable. Our bodies were
most frightfully bitten. Lately, however, a steward
at the hospital concocted a powder of materials
which he had on hand. It makes one sneeze, it
is so powerful ; but under these circumstances
sneezing is a joy. One knows our arch-enemies
are dying, although this does not affect the unget-
atable mosquito, who sings on nightly.

Last night young Warren, of the Customs, was
carried through the compound on the way to the

MORE DEATHS 125

hospital, his face almost entirely shot off. I knew
him quite well — had danced with him often; he
was a charming fellow. He died at daybreak this
morning. One of our wonderful shots, a marine
named Fisher, who was stationed on the Wall,
was shot and instantly killed this morning, and
to-day really seems to be the most disheartening
morning of the siege, for so many men are going,
as the French Canadians would say, " on their last
great trail," or " over the Great Divide."

About 8.30 this morning, after our mess had
been straightened up, I was en route for the hospital,
canying a pot of coffee to the doctors and nurses,
when some soldiers passed me, carrying a rough
htter bearing Captain Strouts, mortally wounded.
It was especially shocking to me to see him thus,
as he had breakfasted with us at seven o'clock, and
had seemed tired from his constant work, but
hopeful and in good spirits. His arm was hanging
limp, the hands and fingers stiff with agony. It
seemed but a moment before that I had passed
him at breakfast a cup of black coffee, to receive
which he had held out that strong, slim hand, with
the signet -ring on the little finger, and now it was
all so changed. In less than two hours the hand

126 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

was again being held out, but in his death-throes.
He had been shot while going over to the Fu with
Colonel Shiba and Dr. Morrison, to decide on some
new plan of defence for that much-fought-over
district, where the firing was constant. Dr. Mor-
rison was hit at the same time, but not seriously,
and the httle Colonel had his cap shot off his head
by two bullets.

These two wounded men were carried to the
hospital, where Captain Strouts was attended to ;
but Dr. Morrison, owing to the great press of work,
had to wait for some hours, nursing the exquisite
agony of his wound, until his turn arrived. Poor
Captain Strouts, with a cut artery in the thigh, only
lived four hours, and died while asleep. He was
so very, very tired. His work had been almost
continuous night and day since he arrived from
Tien-tsin, and especially hard, since he had to share
the work and responsibUity which necessarily fell
on him by the death of so many officers. His
death was very much felt by everyone. Dr. Morrison
and Captain Strouts were frequent members of our
mess, and in one day to have two leave thus — one
wounded and one killed ! Mrs. Squiers and I asked
each other, " Who next ?"

GENERAL DEPRESSION 127

Can it surprise us that to-day the whole com-
pound looks dreary and disheartened ? So many
deaths in one short twenty-four hours I I could
write a great deal if it were of any use — of this
compound, with the shot and shell and bullets,
making it dangerous for us to move about the
smaU open place in the Legation ; of weary waiting
for the troops through heat and rain ; of great
dread over the weak places in our defences ; of
crowded hospital and growing cemetery, and
principally of the nervous strain caused by all this
worrying and fearing over the fate in store for us
should we arrive at that point when we could no
longer hold our own. A good sergeant or corporal
is missed as much when he is wounded or killed as
an officer ; it is especially true of our own marines,
for in many instances they do the work of an officer,
and take as much responsibility. The deaths
are coming so frequently now that a final stand
seems not improbable, and if when that is taken
we continue to have the same percentage of deaths,
then we can well say our prayers. It is discussed
quietly by men that they will certainly kill their
wives when that time comes. God grant it never
may I Apropos of this, I have in my pocket a

128 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

small pistol loaded with several cartridges, to use
if the worst happens. A Belgian secretary stole it
from the armoury for me — "in case you need it,
mademoiselle."

Many is the time bullets passing through the
tops of the trees have cut off branches or twigs
which fall at our feet when attacks begin. We
often see the flash of the cannon as it sends the
shell over the compound, generally too high to
do any damage, but passing before one knows it.
And so it goes, shells and rifle-shots singing all
around us. Late yesterday afternoon the shooting
seemed to cease temporarily as I was sitting with
Baroness von Ketteler on one of the benches which
bore witness that this Supply Department had
been, before the siege, the Legation tennis-court,
when a bullet whistled with startling clearness
within half an inch of my ear, passing between
the Baroness and myself. Knowing that the
sniper who had spied us was taking a moment to
re-aim or reload, I immediately dropped from the
bench on to the ground to get out of his range,
trying at the same time to pull Baroness von
Ketteler with me. This I could not do, and it
was some time before one of the Customs students

PREPARING FOR EMERGENCIES 129

who was working quite near us realized that we
were the target for this new sniping, and forcibly
led her back to the Legation. In her agony of
mind I am sure a bullet to end her suflfering
would have been truly welcomed.

We no longer talk about the troops. If they
come in time they will come in time, and our
one aim will be to last as long as we can. The
only subjects of conversation now are the neces-
sary strengthening of this or that barricade, the
digging of trenches at this or that corner, to
guard against the Chinese undermining us, as they
are sure to do, mining being one of their favourite
methods of warfare.

We are trying to prepare for all emergencies.
People who, before the siege began, seemed
to have reasonable intelligence, and, if one had
thought about such a thing, looked as if they
would show up pretty well if they were put to
it, have now gone to pieces entirely, lacking
apparently the desire even to appear courageous.
The men often make some trifling ailment an
excuse to shirk all work for the common defence,
and spend their time groaning over the situation,
and becoming more hateful daily to the men and

17

130 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

women upon whom the real responsibilities of the
siege are resting ; while the women who have col-
lapsed simply spend their hours, day and night,
behind the nearest closed door, and await each
fresh attack to indulge in new hysterical scenes.

I can honestly say there are more men to the
bad than women. When anyone becomes really
seized with this terror they lose aU sense of pro-
portion — the slightest provocation brings forth
torrents of self-pity, and they ask only for the
impossible. To-day I took the French governess
her dinner, into which, I must admit, the cook
had dashed the curry-powder rather too strongly.
With this small contretemps as a starter, she
seized my hands, and with heart-breaking sobs
begged me to save her, as she knew, from the
unusual taste of her food, that someone was trying
to poison her. " Mademoiselle, je ne demande
que peu, simplement qu'on me retourne tout de
suite en France." To tell her we had all eaten the
same curry, and that it was as impossible to send
her to France as it was to send her to the moon,
were words thrown away ; she was hopelessly
unbalanced with terror.

Several people have already lost their minds;

MADNESS 131

among them a dear old Italian priest, P^re Dosio,
the Superior of the Nan-t'ang, which was looted and
burnt with the accompanying horrors. I talked
with him from day to day, and from being at
first comhle with grief at the ruin of his life's work
in the destruction of his cathedral and hospital,
he gradually has become full of hallucinations.
His loss of mind has been a gentle affair com-
pared to the violence shown by a Swedish mis-
sionary named Norregarde, who at times has to
be confined with armed guards over him, as he is
utterly deranged. He escaped once, and marched
out of the British Legation gate to the canal, and
it seems that he went direct to the Tsung-li
Yamen, where he gave them, as far as we can
learn by his own accounts when he returned, all
the information they wanted, and especially urged
them not to shoot so high, as few of their shots
harmed us. Since his return he has been hourly
guarded, but, unfortunately, we notice his advice
has been taken, and Chinese shooting comes lower.
The Chinese have a great respect for the insane,
thinking the spirits who possess them are sacred.
They gave him a good dinner, and he returned
unharmed to the British Legation. The Chinese

132 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

are working harder to take the Fu than any other
point. It holds nearly three thousand native
Christians, and it is these poor wretches whom the
Chinese would first love to murder. Then, too,
if they got the Fu, they could so easily mount
guns on its wall and fire down on us. We must
hold the Fu and the Tartar Wall directly behind
the American Legation, but it will cost us the lives
of aU our marines to hold the latter.

On the 14th two messengers came to the British
compound carrying a letter signed " Prince Ching
and others." This communication was interpreted
by some as a desire of Jung Lu to incriminate
Prince Ching, as the letter came from the former's
camp, and he is a well-known hater of both the
foreigners and Prince Ching. If we answered it,
and sent the answer to him to Jung Lu's camp,
from whom it came, nothing would be easier than
for Jung Lu to take the communication to the
Empress-Dowager, and thus prove to her Ching's
perfidy in writing to the Ministers.

Mr. Pethick disagrees entirely with this view, and
urges the Ministers to answer it, as he feels con-
vinced it is a genuine beginning of parleyings which,
if nothing comes of them, would probably at least

A SUSPICIOUS LETTER 133

give us an armistice and a respite from the horrible
attacks. This letter is fairly threatening, and it
reads that we must now leave Peking, or they will
do their worst ; that they have tried to communi-
cate with us before, but their advances were never
"gracefully received"; that we had fired first, and
they were glad that so far only one Minister Pleni-
potentiary had been killed. As for the way of going,
we must all leave Peking in tens, or those who
desire to remain temporarily would be afforded pro-
tection and lodging in the Tsung-li Yamen, etc. It
was addressed to Sir Claude and other Ministers, and
they threatened in a postscript that terrible things
would happen to us if they received no letter in
answer by twelve o'clock the next day.

Opinions vary about it, but everyone agrees that
it is worth whUe answering whether it is a ruse or
not. So the response was sent yesterday at noon.
The messenger who brought us this letter was the
Chinese Christian who took, or tried to take, Sir
Claude's communication to Admiral Seymour, and
was caught by the Chinese, beaten in the most
horrible way, and robbed of the letter containing
information as to our numbers, strength, etc., which
the Chinese must have been veiy glad to get. The

18

134 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

messenger was then taken to Jung Lu's camp,
where this letter was given him to dehver to us, as
he knew the way that would get him quickly
into our Unes. This man was again used to take
our answer to Jung Lu's camp. Some say the
troops are on the way, and the Chinese are trying to
start negotiations before they arrive, either to make
us come out of our Unes, so that they can murder
us easily, or so that they can say to the Powers,
when they finally arrive, that they kept up com-
munication with us, and that it was our own fault
that we barricaded ourselves in our Legations ;
others insist that it is altogether a blague and
a canard.

The morning following Captain Strouts' death
the Ministers and guard -captains unanimously
voted Mr. Squiers to be Sir Claude's Chief of Staff,
the position having been unfilled since Captain
Strouts' death. The atmosphere of the besieged in
Peking is not one of peace, but of bitterest feehng,
especially strong against the British, and for no
other reason than that the other nations begrudge
the strategical superiority of the English position.
Everyone hopes, with Mr. Squiers in this r6le, that
things will run smoothly, and that perhaps Sir

FRIENDSHIP AND ENMITY 135

Claude's orders, when delivered to the different
" guards " by an American Chief of Staff, and talked
over with them in their own mother-tongues (for Mr.
Squiers is a linguist), may be oil on the troubled
waters. Let us hope so, for, should national feeling
ever reach the top notch, this besieged area will
separate — the Continentals on one side and the
English and Americans on the other — and Heaven
only knows how soon the end would come for
everybody should this horror of military separation
take place.

The strong feelings of friendship, that are perhaps
due to the propinquity of our lines, have made the
Russians our good friends and comrades, leading
them to express to us freely their intense disUke of
the British in violent phrases : " Ces chiens
d'Anglais ! Comment supportez-vous leurs arro-
gances et leurs maniferes de cochons ?" And later
on an Englishman would drop into our mess for a
moment and admonish us with the words : " You
Americans are the devil. You are on good terms

with every d d dago in the place ; and as for

the Russians, you love them as though they were
your long-lost brothers !" It is unique, this feeling
of ours of amity and good- will towards almost every-

136 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

body here, and I am confident it is greatly due to the
strong personality of Mr. Squiers that, as a Lega-
tion, we hold this extraordinary balance of things in
Peking, which places the Americans in the lead on,
this diplomatic chess-board.

July 31.

In the afternoon of the 16th, the day of Captain
Strouts' death, and while we were all attending his
funeral, Mr. Conger, Mr. Squiers, and M. de Giers
were told to come and interview a messenger who
had arrived with a white flag, bringing a letter from
" Prince Ching and others " in answer to our letter
of the 14th. The messenger apparently came from
the Yamen, and had a cipher telegram for the
American Minister from the State Department in
Washington, reading simply, " Give tidings bearer,"
then saying that we could send an answer to the
Secretary of State through them ; but, knowing it
must be an open telegram, which they could easUy
change, no steps were taken to answer it. The
following day came another letter from the Yamen
to Mr. Conger that Minister Wu in Washington
had written thus, " China is sent greetings and
aid by the United States, and desires to know how
is the health of Mr. Conger," and this message stated

EDWIN H. CONGER
(united states minister)

keproduced hy permission from "the si'heke"

To fine page 136

A MESSAGE TO WASHINGTON 137

that the American Minister would be allowed to
send one cablegram in cipher. Realizing the great
responsibility devolving upon us to send a clear and
strong telegram to the outside world, our Legation
consulted with Sir Claude and other Ministers about
the wording. The gist of what they sent was that,
" We are holding our last position under shot and
shell in the British Legation, and we will be
massacred shortly if help does not come."

The following day, when the Yamen messenger
came for the telegram, the other Ministers sent
cipher messages also, hoping they might be sent.
They were returned, however, with no apology.
Since then there has been a message of some sort
on every other day from the Yamen, signed " Prince
Ching." The attacks are so irregular now that one
cannot count on them, except that they are apt to
occur at the most inopportune time during the day,
and when least expected. Once, even two or three
of the clerks or under-secretaries of the Tsung-li
Yamen " called." They were evidently frightened
and nervous at what they considered actually
coming into the hon's den, but amenities only were
discussed. We very naturally considered them of
too inferior rank to treat officially. In one of the

138 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

many letters in answer to Prince Ching's, Sir Claude
wrote that we could hold out indefinitely with food,
soldiers, and ammunition, but that the ladies and
children felt the need of ice, eggs, and fresh fruit ;
so yesterday, the 20th, came three carts fuU of
melons, six bags of flour, egg-plants, and an uneat-
able Chinese vegetable — no eggs, no ice, or fruit,
except the unripe melons.

We have been trying to make a kind of market
with the Chinese soldiers doing duty on the Chinese
sentry lines, but although they would be very glad
to pocket the big commission which they could get
out of the transaction, they have not been allowed
to do so by their officers, but they smuggle in eggs
for us every morning at high prices [bien entendu),
just enough for a very small supply for the hospital.

An interesting rumour that comes to us by a
captured Chinese, and is generally credited to be
true, is that Tung Fu-hsiang's army has retired
south from Peking to meet the foreign troops.
Another rumour, however, says that Tung Fu-
hsiang has departed westward, and as he was
only a Mohammedan brigand before the Empress-
Dowager elevated him to the head of her army, the
Chinese think he has gone, not to meet our troops,

LETTERS FROM THE YAMEN 139

but to continue the good work and merry life as
a bandit in Mongolia. A letter comes to-day to
Sir Robert Hart from the Yamen which is most
polite and gushing. They regret most sincerely
that his house and compound have been burned,
and state at the same time that the Customs
aiFairs have been turned almost upside down in
consequence of lack of orders during the past six
weeks from the Inspector-General. It is probable
that they will come to Sir Robert for help as soon
as things become more quiet.

The other day, when they sent us fruit and
vegetables, they said they regretted they could not
send us ice, because, if they attempted to do so, the
Boxers, who like ice, would be sure to capture it.
Apropos of ice, another baby's life could un-
doubtedly to-day have been saved had there been
any in the compound. These "might-have-beens"
are so agonizing.

M. Pichon, the French Minister, to-day had a
very nice telegram sent him from France, saying :
" You are unanimously voted to have the Legion
of Honour. Your mother sends her love and
greeting, and 15,000 Frenchmen are on their way
to your support."

140 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

On the 18th a messenger got through from the
Japanese Consul in Tien-tsin to Narahara, saying
that he hoped the large foreign contingent of
soldiers would get started by the 20th for the
relief of Peking ; he hoped there would be 24,000
Japanese, 6,000 Russians, 3,000 British, and 1,500
Americans ; and that the Chinese city of Tien-tsin
had been burnt, but not the foreign settlement.

The Russians seemed horribly worried about so
many Japanese soldiers coming, but there are
rumours that the Russians have been keeping away
from Tien-tsin so as not to join the allied Powers,
and perhaps be forced to make some promises
which they might regret later, and that they are
doing some seizing of territory at the present on
their own account on the plea of defending their
railways. An Englishman here, being, of course,
anti-Russian, insists that this nation is absolutely
careless about its Minister or the other Russian
people trapped here, whether they Uve or not. If
it is a question of making some coup for the
aggrandizement of their country, they would not
hesitate to sacrifice their people in Peking. One
of the men in the Russian Legation is named
Pompoff, and has a very pretty wife with a gorgeous

THE RELIEF REPULSED 141

voice, and as Russia is known to want Manchuria,
he put it quite aptly in speaking of probable orders
from St. Petersburg : " They will say, Mon Dieu,
what is Madame PompofF to Manchuria ?"

A day or two ago, when news came to the
Japanese that the alhed troops were mobilizing in
Tien-tsin, a letter came to M. Joostens, the Belgian
Minister, from Kettles, the Belgian Consul, telling
him in an excited way a little of the news we are
all thirsting to hear — that Seymour's rehef party
had got near Peking about the end of June, but
had been driven back toward Tien-tsin, owing
to great numbers of Chinese soldiers opposed to
them, and lack of supplies and water. They were
then cut off from Tien-tsin by the Chinese under
General Neih, and their whole column would
have been massacred there had not 3,000 troops
from Tien-tsin gone out to their rescue. Neih
was defeated, and, in consequence, committed
suicide.

The foreigners and soldiers then in Tien-tsin
proceeded to take and bum the native city, over
700 being killed and wounded. Towards the end
of this interesting letter Mr. Kettles naively re-
marked that he doubted if the Belgian Minister

142 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

would ever get this letter, but if he did it might
please him to learn that his home Government had
wired to M. de Cartier to remain in Shanghai and
await orders, for he undoubtedly would be sent to
Peking as Charg^ d' Affaires, "the Minister, M.
Joostens, having been massacred." No matter what
queer things happen in this world, humour is
always left if one looks for it.

At the hospital an apparatus for applying X rays
would have saved the lives of many. Poor Nara-
hara, a Japanese officer, died this morning from lock-
jaw produced by a bullet which pierced his thigh.
He has suffered horribly for three weeks. Dr.
Lippitt, after waiting four weeks for his leg to be
in a condition for the surgeons to make another
search for the bullet, had the pleasant news told
him, after an agonizing examination, that it could
not be found. We are hoping that if the troops
arrive soon their medical corps will have X-ray
machines, and that Lippitt 's leg may be saved. He
has suffered and is suffering much physical pain, but
more mental, I think, from the close proximity to
the bed on which so many men have died, all the
details of which he has seen, and the climax was
reached during the night by the death of Narahara,

MADAME DE GlERS 143

whose wound was almost similar to his, although
lately Narahara's wound has been complicated by
lock-jaw, whereas in the doctor's case there have
been no complications. If we get out of Peking,
Dr. Velde deserves from every nation that is re-
presented here a grateful acknowledgment of his
services during the siege.

The vsdfe of the Russian Minister, Madame de
Giers, a handsome woman with a great ciiarm of
manner, has been a veritable angel of mercy in the
hospital. She has personally nursed most of the
Russian patients, for while all Russians of educa-
tion speak either French or German, and the
hospital nurses understand their wants, to the
poor sailors,' who can express themselves only in
their own language, her nursing is a Godsend, and
she is on duty with her suffering compatriots an
incredible number of hours out of the twenty-four.
A graduate trained nurse, working to make a
record, could do no more than she is doing, and
her physical strength, patience, and gentleness are
a joy to witness.

No Minister's wife in Peking can approach in
any way to having helped with the burdens of
the siege as Madame de Giers. The old saw of

144 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

" Scratch a Slav and you find a Tartar " could be
changed by those who see them here in Peking in
so many instances " making good " to, " Scratch a
Slav and you find a hero." The past week while
these negotiations, communications, and mes-
sengers have been arriving the calm has been very
noticeable, only I must admit that it seems almost
as if one would prefer to say, " If it is war, then let
it be war," for under these circumstances one would
not, or, I should say, could not, have time to appre-
ciate to the fuU extent this fiendish weather, this
war and siege regimen, and the eternal and without
end discussions about the troops. As long as the
continual attacks were going on we knew it was a
matter of life and death, and every man did his
allotted work without a murmur, but now, owing
to the half-armistice that exists, the five- week strain
during this terrible weather is beginning to tell ;
everyone is seedy, and most of the work is done by
dragging one leg after the other, while dysentery
has a terrible hold on most of the people here. To
me the most pitiful of all scenes in this compound
is the collection of perambulators, huddled together
in the shadiest part, with limp, languid babies in
them, some looking so ill that their parents must feel

MORE NEGOTIATIONS 145

that each day more of the siege brings their little
ones nearer death.

Yesterday, July 25, another communication
came from the Yamen, saying that they again asked
us to leave Peking, under, of course, their solici-
tous care ; that they feel that they can no longer
protect us, although in any circumstances they
will continue to do all in their power, and that
they would like all the Ministers to send open
telegrams to their respective Governments that
they are all quite well.

We suppose that the pressure of the world is
being brought to bear on such high Chinese
officials as can be reached to find out how we are,
and they in turn are trying to force us to reassure
our Governments by these covert threats. At ten
o'clock this morning the Ministers had a meeting,
and sent a unanimous statement, saying that Lega-
tions never send telegrams unless in cipher, so they
could not comply with the Yamen's request, and
that, as for wanting us all to leave for Tien-tsin im-
mediately, we might consider the proposition if the
Yamen would be kind enough to give us complete
and accurate information as to what kind of a
convoy they would give us, and what comforts

19

146 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

would be furnished for the women and children.
Of course, we have no idea of going anywhere with
them as protectors ; but it is well to keep up com-
munication, as it gives us time.

Surely it will be a surprise to the world to find
us not dead, and to hear how we held our own.
Last night the hospital statement was as foUows :
165 men kiUed and wounded — 12 per cent, killed,
and 20 per cent, wounded.

People's larders are getting terribly empty, and
the menu I quoted three weeks ago is now in the
dim and distant past. We live quite sparingly,
and are hungry most of the time. The chief com-
forts of our mess now are the Selzogene bottles
that Mrs. Squiers brought with us from our Lega-
tion, in which we daily make enough soda-water
to last throughout the day.

Last night I was walking round the compound
with M. Knobel, a Minister Plenipotentiary, who has
not seemed as yet to develop any special attributes
during the siege beyond the very common one of
being intensely hungry — so very hungry, in fact, that
as we passed the bungalow given to the Russians,
which boasts a few trees, Knobel's hungry eyes
descried in the gloom six or more fat hens, be-

CHICKEN-STEALING 147

longing to some woman in the Legation, roosting
high up on the branches. There was no sniping
going on, and we took advantage of the quiet to
walk once again round the compound, and noticed
that, though it was early, everyone seemed to have
turned in to get what rest they could before being
awakened by the usual nightly attack.

The night was also getting blacker, and by the
time we got round to the Russian bungalow again
Knobel's fell purpose had seized him in a deter-
mined grip. He whispered to me, " If you will
watch, I will get a chicken. There will be no
noise, and to-morrow we will have a real dinner
and eat that chicken." It flashed through my
mind that at home, if clever darkies could not steal
chickens without making a racket, I did not see
how Knobel, who has probably never in his life
come nearer to one than to pay his steward's bills,
could expect to be successful. However, there
was no time to argue. Knobel had left me standing
in the road, watching his figure disappear in the
darkness. A rustle, a slight squawk, and my
Minister friend was by me again, with a squirming
bundle under his coat. We ran, as if the Boxers
were after us, straight to the Chinese courtyard.

148 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

where we found our fat cook. Fortunately he
had done his daily duty on the " gang," and was
obviously delighted to receive our stolen booty —
"All lighty. Me flixy good dinner to-moUow,"
and winked comprehendingly as he saw that
Knobel had been holding Miss Chicken's neck so
tightly she could not utter a sound. With a sigh
of relief, Knobel turned her over to the cook, and
with another but deeper sigh of anticipation of
to - morrow's dinner, he steathily started by a
roundabout way to return to his quarters.

Colonel Shiba, the Japanese commander, who
has won the sincerest admiration from everyone,
states to-day that he confidently expects the troops
by July 28.

July 28.

This day, which was to have been so auspicious,
brings us the worst news of the siege. It is to the
effect that as late as July 22 no troops had yet left
Tien-tsin for our relief

A little Chinese boy, of the Presbyterian mission,
aged fifteen, small but clever, was sent out by us,
on the night of July 5, for Tien-tsin, with a letter
to the British Consul, Mr. Carles, telling him of
our very terrible plight, and how we must have

BAD NEWS 149

relief soon, and writing him in the strongest terms
of our danger. This boy, after being let down over
the Tartar Wall by a rope, made his way to
Tien-tsin without many adventures, beyond being
seized at one place and made to do coolie work for
eight days. He then escaped, but, once arrived at
Tien-tsin, he had great difficulty in getting through
the outposts of the foreign troops who are apparently
carefully guarding that part of Tien-tsin, which is
in their hnes. It is insisted here that the British
Consul must be lacking in intelligence. He neither
questioned the boy, who could have told him a
great deal about our condition, nor did he give the
boy any letters from the other Consuls, simply
sending his own.

It took the boy a long time to walk back to
Peking, and, finding the Water Gate too dangerous
to enter by daylight, he waited until dark, and it
was this letter that spread such a gloom over
everything this morning. This communication of
Mr. Carles was most unsatisfactory in every way,
and the only excuse for this letter was that he was
afraid it would fall into the hands of the Chinese.
He wrote : " The rest of the British contingent,
under General Gaselee, coming from Singapore,

20

150 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

are expected on the 24th. Most of the Japanese
troops are in Tien-tsin, and mobiUzed. The
Russians are only landing at Taku. There are
many Chinese troops between Tien-tsin and the
coast. If you have plenty of food, and can hold
out for a long time, the troops will save you. All
foreign women and children have left Tien-tsin, and
plenty of soldiers are on their way to your succour."
This was all very disheartening ; but we realize
more than ever before how long we still may be
besieged, and the consequent economy of stores
which should be practised, and there is talk of
commandeering all private food-supplies.

The last sentence of his letter was hopelessly
confusing. We did not know whether the troops
had already started, or whether he was speaking of
the Singapore contingent. Most people now feel
that no reasonable Foreign Office should take two
months to get a military rehef party ready.

This is a piping hot day, 108° in the shade. Our
principal conversation now is asking each other,
" Is Colonel Shiba's messenger reliable ?" This
man brings in almost daily to the Japanese camp

SIR R. HART'S ANSWER 151

the most cheerful and apparently accurate news
that the troops are not far from Tungchou. If
he is rehable, we may expect them very soon, but
we can hardly believe his statements, owing to
Mr. Carles' letter. This is simply another varia-
tion to our old song of the siege.

The day before yesterday a letter came to Sir R.
Hart from the Yamen, asking him to be so kind
as to send a telegram to London telling the people
there of our safety, because the different Govern-
ments were clamouring for news of their Ministers,
and if he (Sir Robert) would send this telegram, it
would be received as truth by the world, but they
could not allow the Ministers to use their own
codes.

Sir Robert answered immediately that the
Ministers were quite right to decline to telegraph
without cipher, and that he distinctly refused to
send any telegram of such a nature as to reassure
the world, because if he telegraphed the truth, the
world would be so horrified that they would not
believe his telegram. Well answered, Mr. Inspector-
General,

I had the good luck to-day of being allowed to
go over our defences on the Wall, and saw all of

152 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

our protective barricades while getting there.
Baron von Rahden and Mr. Squiers took me, and,
needless to say, it was most interesting and
thrilling. The conditions I had heard discussed
for nearly two months I can now understand by
seeing them all. I could also now understand the
all-pervading charnel-house smells which at times
during the siege have almost caused us to faint.

On each defended barricade loopholes have been
made so that we can see, to some degree at least,
the enemy. In many instances the loopholes are
arranged with small mirrors, as the Chinese snipers
often hit even these peepholes when a sentry's eye
is seen, so that this further protection has been
deemed necessary.

I looked through one from a barricade in the
Hanlin, and what I saw was what I might see in
looking through the wicket -gate of a horror
chamber at the Eden Mus^e in New York. A
group of gorgeously-apparelled Boxers with their
insignia were pitilessly caught by death in a mad
dash at this barricade, and there they were, stiff
and stark, nearly all in the furious attitudes of
assault ! Even the standard-bearer was stiffly and
conscientiously gripping his gay-coloured pennant.

UP ON THE WALL 153

A couple were shot in the back as they had started
to run, and were lying flat on the ground, but a
dozen or so, making up the body of the attacking
party, held these horrible life-like positions with
the most incredible rigidity. The sentry teUs us
that this hideous, almost theatrically posed, death-
group has been thus for a couple of days. The
Chinese would not come for their bodies, we could
not, and there they were to remain until the
carrion-dogs finished them, or until they eventually
decomposed.

The combinations of barricades here, there, and
everywhere are glorious, especially on the Wall, and
well they might be, as they are made out of the
huge rocks that were used hundreds of years ago
to pave this wonderful piece of masonry. To
stand and look down from the Wall into the
British compound makes one reaUze more than
ever how delightfully easy it would be for the
Chinese, if they ever manned this part of the Wall,
to point their guns downward and annihilate us.

Forgetting this possible picture, let me look
down and teU you what I see on this beautiful,
sunshiny August morning. Before me lies what
we could naturally call the terre du siege, and

154 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

comprises the Japanese, German, French, Russian,
American, and British compounds, all of which
have their flags flying somewhere, although in
most cases the original Legation flag-poles have
been shot down. Then comes as a pretty piece of
colouring, in contrast to the sacked, burnt, and
charred Chinese houses, all that remains of the
Hdtel de P^kin, with its collection of flags of all
nations flying in seeming defiance from the upper
windows.

Further up Legation Street one sees a dirty,
tired-looking, slimy green canal, running parallel to
the British Legation, with a strong and high
barricade on the bridge that spans it, so that
we still have communication with those Lega-
tions on the other side — namely, the Japanese,
German, and French. Then between and around
these oases of compounds one sees an occasional
big tree which has escaped burning, and which
makes the scene of desolation seem even more
lonely and desolate. Hundreds of houses, half
burnt, half broken up, and wholly uninhabitable,
tell the story of how in those first horrible
attacks at the beginning of the siege they were
used by the Chinese as cover, and then looted

H
U

S

H
H

O
H
g

H
O

THE FORBIDDEN CITY 155

and burnt. A stray dog of the large wolfish,
mongrel type that is so common in Peking can be
seen picking his way about from place to place
with the queer look and walk that seem to mark
carrion animals.

Standing in the same place, but looking west-
ward, one sees such a picture of beauty as one
could never imagine even in one's most exquisite
dreams — a song of green and gold, the fairyland
palaces of the wicked old ogress, the Empress-
Dowager, these ideal gold- topped pavilions, palaces,
and pagodas rising out of a veritable sea of
green, which quivers and shimmers in the warm
summer sunlight. In the old days we were
frankly told that it was dangerous to wander too
near enchanted palaces, and if this warning had been
remembered, Kings and Queens would not have
sent their knights of diplomacy to Uve on the other
side of the Wall of this mysterious " Forbidden
Purple City." It was always a hazardous thing to
do, even in fairy stories, and it seems as if the
tale of what happened to these misguided knights
may finish in the regular good old way, "And
they were eaten up and never seen any more."

156 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

August 2.

To-day there is posted on the Bell Tower — a
sort of summer-house in the centre of the British
compound, where all notices are posted, and around
which people congregate at all times to hear the
news — the translation of the cipher letter that
came yesterday to Sir R. Hart, which came from
the Customs in London, through the Yamen:
" Keep up heart. Chinese finally routed at Tien-
tsin on July 15. Troops having great difficulty in
getting enough transports, hut expect to leave for
Peking after July 28. Is Chinese Government
protecting you, and do you get food from them ?"
They then refer to Mr. Conger's telegram of
the 18th.

Another choice bit of news comes to-day that
two members of the Yamen have just been be-
headed because they are suspected of being pro-
foreign — Hsu Ching Cheng, Director of the Imperial
University and President of the Manchurian Rail-
way, at one time Minister to Germany and Russia ;
the other an ex-Taotai, a member of the Tsung-li
Yamen, and an ex- Minister to Russia. Such is the
price one pays in China for having assimilated broad
ideas while enjoying diplomatic posts in Europe.

RATIONS REDUCED 157

As I write, over in Mrs. Squiers's house in the
American Legation, where since this half-armistice
we have been allowed to come occasionally and
take a bath or read, I can see them taking away one
of Mr. Squiers's favourite ponies to be slaughtered
to-morrow. The supply of horses is getting very
low, and it wiU certainly be hard for the fighting-
men when the rations are reduced from horse and
rice simply to rice, but it is really not pleasant to
see one's pet pony being taken off to help the
supply.

August 3.

Good news came yesterday, late in the afternoon,
by a messenger who was clever enough to get
through the Chinese lines. He brought in five
letters, mostly from the Consuls in Tien-tsia — from
Consul Ragsdale to Mr. Conger ; from the German
Consul to Von Below, the German Charg^
d'Aifaires ; ft'om Mr. Lowry to his wife ; from
Captain Mallory to Captain Myers ; and one for
Sir R. Hart. These letters are most cheering,
because they all prove that our troops must arrive
soon, but they are stupid, in that they give us none
of the facts we are thirsting for ; they don't even
tell us approximately when we may expect relief.

158 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

They all take the attitude that the writers are
pleased that we are not dead, then give us some
trifling details about themselves in Tien-tsin and
long, rambling accounts of what wonders they have
gone through. Nine days besieged ! and the car-
penters are at work on the consulate porch, as a
shell hit it ; and Mr, Carles, the British Consul,
even told us in the intricate consular cipher that
he had had bad dreams about us the night before.
The only letter that was to the point was from
Colonel Mallory, an American, who sent us some
good details and dates : the taking of Tien-tsin,
July 15, etc. ; the magnificent work of our marines ;
and last, but not least, his definite assurance that
the Americans at least in the contingent would do
all they could to start the advance-guard of 10,000
by July 28. General Chaffee's note to the Ameri-
can Minister seemed to promise good things from
its very miUtary brevity : " I arrived this morning.
— Chaffee."

All the Consuls seemed overcome by the gravity
of their own situation, for aU the ladies have left or
are leaving Tien-tsin. The night these letters came
Von Below was sharing such dinner as we had
with us. After it was over we all sat on the floor

AN IMPERIAL EDICT 159

and discussed the comparative merits of the remain-
ing stores, and he truly remarked that in these siege
days, instead of looking at and discussing bibelots
after dinner, one is glad to examine, exchange, and
count tins.

The day before yesterday an announcement was
made in the Peking Gazette, the Imperial news-
paper organ of the capital (these occasional bits
of information we get by bribing heavUy some
fairly detached Chinese sentry) to the effect that
Jung Lu was appointed by the Empress to devise
means of carrying out the order that all the Lega-
tions were to be escorted to Tien-tsin, and that he
was to see that they were tenderly cared for, and
that any annoyance given to them on their way to
the coast should call forth an immediate punish-
ment.

Then a letter came to us, stating that they (the
Yamen) had had letters from all their Ministers in
the different countries saying that the Governments
wished their representatives to retire to the coast,
and that JungLu had been appointed to escort us.
We rephed, as usual, that we desired first to com-
municate with our Governments on the subject,

160 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

and we also enclosed cipher telegrams. Yesterday
came an answer, saying that they had been sent,
but, of course, with lack of telegraphic facilities
from Peking, it will probably be a week before our
home Governments get them. To-day Baroness
von Ketteler took a simple tiffin with Mrs. Squiers.
Her condition has been such that she has not had
one night of natural sleep in the seven weeks since
her husband's murder.

I am sure everyone is sorry for Lady Macdonald,
with that enormous mess to keep going. The com-
plaints that people actually have the impertinence
to make at her table, loud enough for her to hear,
got so bad that one day she rose from her chair and
said : " I give you the best I have ; I can do nothing
better ; and, what is more, let me remind you that
what is good enough for the British Minister to eat
is more than good enough for anybody here."

It is just seven weeks to-day since we came here
for a few days until the troops should arrive, and
food is running very short. There is, moreover,
scarcely any condensed milk in the compound.
Another European baby died yesterday, simply

Copyright, Piric sVacDonaid, Neiu York

GENERAL A. R. CHAFFEE

To face fage i6o

BABIES AND A HEN 161

from lack of food. It lay in its little coffin looking
so white and tired. Out of pity for the mothers
the hospital steward makes little rough coffin-boxes
for their babies. All mothers who have children
and infants who are Ul or weak seem fascinated by
these pitiful funerals, and they all go to them.

There is a good, busy old hen who lays an egg
every day. She is given an entire deserted court-
yard in the American Legation, a part of which is
not in use, and I have fed her personally, or seen
that she has been fed, ever since I placed her there
at the beginning of the siege. There are three babies
here, ranging in age from twelve to eighteen months,
who are slowly dying from lack of digestible food.
I give an egg to each mother every third day.
The eggs are beautifully fresh, and the horror of it
all is that these agonized mothers know, and I
know, that, could I give the egg to them each day,
instead of every third day, their babies could pro-
bably live ; but as I can't, I have to divide them,
and I cry with the pity of it.

Unless the troops come soon it is dreadful to
think of the fate of the Chinese Christians in the
Fu. Until now we have been able to give them a
certain amount of food daily, but we can only spare

21

162 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

this supply a few more days. These poor people
will be forced to choose between leaving the Fu,
with an almost certain chance of massacre, probably
of torture, and staying where they are and dying
of starvation.

No description of this place can give an idea of
it as it exists to-day. To turn to Dora's engravings
in Dante's " Inferno " would help. Every tree in the
Fu, and there are many, has been stripped of leaves
by these starving people ; the smaller branches
pulled and the bark chewed off. Diseased or not,
these wretched people have been forced to remain
here all together, as there is no other place for them.
Carrion crows and dogs are killed and dragged to
the Fu by sentries whenever possible, and these
ravenous creatures pull the flesh from their bones
and eat it without a pretence of cooking. Every
morning when the two horses are shot at the
slaughter-house, for distribution to the messes,
half of the inedible parts are eaten with relish by
these starving people.

The heat is intense, the ground in the Fu is
brovim and hard, the children are naked, and the
adults wear little, but one and all are enveloped
with the agony of relentless, hideous starvation.

LI HUNG CHANG 163

The white rice which we have used in the com-
pound has been finished, and we now use the
yellow or uncleaned rice, which is very sandy and
gritty, and which even the coolies in ordinary times
would never think of using. It is made into curries
or eaten plain, but one has to swallow it in spoonfuls
without closing one's teeth on it, or it would be
too much like chewing sand.

To-day a letter came from the Yamen saying that
Li Hung Chang had arrived in Shanghai, and that
he would soon begin peace negotiations by tele-
graph with the Ministers in Peking. Not a word
was mentioned about our leaving for Tien-tsin, nor
an apology for the continued sniping at night, and
the occasional attacks which make us realize the lie
that we are being " tenderly cared for and watched
over by the Empress." Apropos of this clever old
statesman, Li Hung Chang, the story is told of
him that when, after some months of hard work
and successful diplomacy, he had completed the
terms of the treaty of Shimonoseki with the
Japanese after the China-Japan War of 1894,
although the Chinese had been whipped, Li had
procured a most advantageous treaty for his
Empress, and while the ink was hardly dry on the

164 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

document he procured an audience with T'si An,
and after kowtowing the entire length of the
audience-hall in great abasement, he finally reached
her august presence and told her of the successful
termination of the work she had entrusted to him.
All high Chinese officials are supposed to get
plenty of legitimate " squeeze " out of their poUtical
sinecures, and expect no monetary remimeration
from the Government or throne. At the end of the
interview the Empress made a sign to him to indi-
cate that he would receive a personal present for his
services, which would be given him in the anteroom.
. Li Hung Chang had always been a great collector
of Chinese ceramics, and his collections were
promptly sold by him to the highest bidder at
Christie's in London for many pounds sterling. He
was, in fact, notorious for this weakness, and it was
well known that he would sell anything he owned,
provided the amount offered was large enough, from
the Russian sable coat in his own wardrobe to the
fine latest antique, deUcate-tinted rose vase he had
procured. On leaving the audience-chamber, his
eyes sparkled when a large cloth-of-gold bag, con-
taining some heavy article, was handed to him by
a eunuch. He flew to his own palace, hardly able

THE EMPRESS'S JEST 165

to wait for his secretary, Mr. Pethick, who is one of
the greatest connoisseurs on ancient Chinese art, to
arrive and examine this new acquisition, which had
come straight from the Empress- Dowager's treasure
store. Some time was spent in a careful examina-
tion to determine the dynasty during which this
treasure was produced, but the date of this especial
paste was lost, with its other technical classifica-
tions. After a long time Mr. Pethick lifted it
gingerly, placed it on a table, put himself in front
of it, drawing a wrap around his shoulders, and
slowly, very slowly, held his hands up to it, turning
them in the attitude of warming them at a fire.

Chinese need few words. Li understood, and was
heart-broken. This was a clever reproduction made
in Paris, and the secretary warming his hands before
it meant it was so fresh from the pottery furnace
that he could still notice the warmth. Naughty
old Empress, fooling her most faithful of servitors !

Last night there was a very severe attack, coming
from all sides at once, and the firing continued for
many hours. It is outrageous, considering the
letters we get every day from the Yamen, declaring
to us that they give orders to their soldiers daily
that there must be no more shooting.

22

166 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

It seems as though this " Chinese diplomacy "
may be successful, and they may succeed in starving
us out first. By negotiating indefinitely with our
Governments and Li Hung Chang in Shanghai,
and having assured the Powers we are quite safe,
with plenty of food, they may be able to keep us
here starving. What a refinement of cruel Chinese
diplomacy that would be !

In one of our letters to the Yamen we stated that
we insisted on their opening a market for our use,
but the letter in reply ignored the subject abso-
lutely, simply saying that they enclosed some
telegrams from our Consuls in Chefoo and
Shanghai, etc.

These telegrams, again, I must add, were most
tantalizing. They gave us no news at all, simply
congratulating us on being still alive. It is stated
that from the Tartar Wall enormous numbers of
troops have been seen leaving Peking, and from
messengers and coolies we learn that these troops
are advancing to give battle to our foreign troops,
and that only a few companies of Jung Lu's troops
are left here to continue to make things lively
for us.

GOOD NEWS AT LAST 167

Friday, August 10.

Notwithstanding the day, we have just received
the best news that we have yet had. A messenger
arrived from the troops, bringing two short notes,
one from General Gaselee, the commander of the
British forces, and one from General Fukushima, the
Japanese commander, both stating that they have
arrived half-way between Peking and Tien-tsin ;
that they have met enormous forces of Chinese at
two places, and that by hard fighting they had com-
pletely routed them ; that if they had no further
opposition they hoped to arrive between the 13th
and 15th of this month, but owing to the size of
their army, they could not move as quickly as they
wished.

The messenger who brought the letter says that
our long-distance artillery is what is terrifying the
Chinese ; their guns, though perfectly modern, are
comparatively useless, except at moderate range.
We are all wondering what our position will be
until our troops arrive. WUl the Tsung-li Yamen
try and "save their faces" by continuing diplo-
matic relations, or wiU they feel that, with the
foreign troops practically at their doors, they will
receive no mercy from the advancing armies, and

168 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

that they might as well try and kill us before it is
too late to do so ? Perhaps by violently attacking
us at the last moment they feel they may succeed.
Certainly, if several regiments of the defeated
Chinese hurried on to Peking before our troops
could arrive, they might make it a very near thing
as to whether the next day we would hear our troops'
buglers or the trumpets of the judgment-day.

For two nights the fighting has been constant,
and the attacks general and fierce. The Chinese
continue building their barricades higher and
stronger ; we have done the same, but we cannot
understand how the Yamen can have the ittiperti-
nence to speak of the present time as a time of
truce and peace, with these attacks and fighting
going on nightly, and making so much noise that
the ofiicers say it must be heard many miles out of
Peking.

The Yamen claims that these shots are fired by
people the Government cannot control, and that it
is only sniping, which fact is absolutely ridiculous, as
the Empress-Dowager, by cutting off the head of
General Ma, for instance, could easily put a stop to
it all. Such horrible dreams as one has now on
going to sleep after a violent attack, and with the

INTENSE DISCOMFORT 169

awful sounds accompanying such attacks still
ringing our ears! The shrill cries of " Sha I sha !
sha !" (Kill ! kill 1 kill 1) and the constant blowing of
trumpets, is enough to account for our continued
nightmares. While awake the brain can be some-
what controlled, but the real horror of our situation
follows us even in our sleep. On awaking, one
wishes one were asleep again, as the heat is some-
thing awful. The very worst weather of the year is
upon us : the rain is almost incessant, and everything
is sticky and muggy. Of course, this continual
dov^Tipour is very hard on the soldiers, making
everything a mass of mud, and the long, nightly
attacks keep them out in the wet for hours. The
flies, mosquitoes, and fleas are pests that still
continue.

August 13.

An assurance came from the Yamen saying that
we could have as much food as we wanted, and
inviting us to send to them a list of what we
desired, which we did, and they were to have sent
the things yesterday by nine o'clock. Needless to
say, they never appeared.

In the afternoon an official communication came
from the Yamen saying in the most poUte and

170 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

abject Chinese that they would like a personal
interview with the Ministers, to be held in the
German Legation, as it was near their lines. This
letter came late in the afternoon of yesterday, and
the corps was to sleep all night on it, and decide
this morning what to reply. In the compound
feeling ran very high ; everyone is against it.
People felt that to receive these lying tricksters,
who are offering peace and compliment with
one hand, and with the other writing orders to
their army to exterminate us, would be most
undignified.

Early this morning the Ministers decided to bid
them come at eleven o'clock to-day, the 13th. So
they wrote to that effect, and the answer came back
saying they regretted, but that other affairs and
engagements of importance kept them busy to-day,
so they would not be able to come, but hoped to
give themselves that pleasure later. They also
said that the terrible firing we kept up prevented
them sending us the market supplies we desired.
On the face of the awful attack of last night,
continuing as it did from 8 o'clock until 6.30
this morning, the Yamen may have realized the
absurdity of amicable chats, or perhaps they were

A FINAL EFFORT 171

afraid we would seize them, a measure seriously
talked of by some of the officers. By seizing them
all we could then let one depart with the cheering
news that if the attacks continued the rest of the
Yamen would be shot, but these clever old diplo-
mats are not to be caught by any such old Chinese
tricks.

August 14.

Such an attack as we have just had : incessant
throughout last night, the entire night, by its
continuousness and fierceness did much damage
everywhere, but we answered back their volleys,
and were for the first time during the siege spend
thrifts with our ammunition.

August 15.

About midnight it appeared as though the
Chinese were making a final effort to frighten
and demoralize us by a terrific fire from all sides,
and about one o'clock the pom, pom, pom, of
machine-guns became apparent. To whom did
they belong ? Mr. Pethick had told Mr. Squiers
that Li Hung Chang had bought fifty quick-
firing guns just before the siege. In whose
hands were they now? Did the Chinese still

172 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

have them, or had they fallen into the hands of
our rehef ?*

When these guns started their hammering there
was a perceptible pause in the attack for four or
five minutes, when the Chinese fire recommenced
with redoubled effort, if such were possible, making
a veritable ring of flame on all sides of our defence.

Through the racket that was around us all night
we could faintly hear the unmistakable sound of
the foreign guns of our troops. The dull boom of
distant artillery — artillery coming to our rescue !
We no longer asked each other, " When will the
troops arrive ?" We simply stood stUl, listening to
this wonderful music, and goose-flesh ran up and
down us. Early this morning the noise of battle
gradually increased, and from the Tartar Wall we
can see the advancing lines with their artillery,!
which is answered by the Chinese on the Wall.
The allies seem to be approaching Peking in every
direction, for the Chinese are answering with
cannon from every city gate.

* We found out later that the Russians had captured these
gunSj and were using them against the Chinese on the south-
eastern corner of the Wall.

t Afterwards ascertained to be the Japanese trying to drive
the Chinese from the Eastern Gate in order to enter the city.

THE RELIEF ARRIVES 173

We have all become like deaf people, and to
make people hear we have to seize them by the
shoulders and bellow into their ears. We don't
quite know whether the Chinese will occupy
themselves entirely with the advancing troops, or
whether our fortified lines will be swept away by
them in a last attempt on us before the allies
thunder in to our rescue. Opinions vary ; every
barricade is doubly manned, as they have been, in
fact, for the last two nights.

The Russians, English, and Americans finally
succeeded in their attack on the south-eastern Wall,
and entered the Chinese city almost simultaneously,
marching along the southern Wall of the Imperial
City towards the Water Gate, the Ch'ien Men Gate,
and the Ha Ta Men Gate. The commanders
received a cipher despatch from Sir Claude Mac-
donald advising them to enter the Imperial City
by the Water Gate, as we held that portion of the
Wall, and would be able to assist them in entering
at that place.

At about half-past three I was debating with my
maid whether I should or should not go over to the
American Legation and take the cheerful bath
which I had been indulging in each day lately.

174 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

Owing to the half-armistice existing, the early
afternoon hours were fairly safe ones in which to
move ahout the lines, and I was about to start with
bathing paraphernalia and the little maid, when
my inner consciousness was struck by something
unusual happening out in the compound. I tingled
aU over, for my instinct had told me the troops had
come.

Running to the old tennis-court, the only open
space, I found everybody flying in the same
direction. There were about two hundred Sikhs.
They had entered Peking by the Water Gate, or
what one should really call a drain, which allows
the now dried-up water in the canal egress under
the Tartar Wall. It is by this that our mes-
sengers have gone out and come in, and it is the
route Mr. Squiers urged in his letter on both
McCaUa and Chaifee as being the only way by
which troops could penetrate right into the heart of
our hnes without having to take any big gate of
the Tartar city. These Sikhs came in this way,
and they were the first to warm our hearts with
the knowledge that this horrible siege is over.

It was queer to see these great, fine-looking
Indians, in khaki uniforms and huge picturesque

THE SIKHS COME FIRST 175

red turbans, strutting around the compound, and
as they entered right into our midst they all
whooped a good English whoop. A little blond
Englishwoman was so overcome at the relief really
being here that she seized the first one she could
get to and threw her arms around him and em-
braced him. The Sikh was dumfounded at a
mem-sahib apparently so far forgetting all caste. It
seemed odd that the word "relief" should have
been personified in these Eastern and heathen-
looking Sikhs, but it was all the more in keeping
with this extraordinary siege in Peking that they
should be the first on the scene to rescue us.

At this wonderful moment the Chevaher de
Melotte, Mrs. Squiers, and myself, without a word
spoken, flew with common consent to the point in
our lines down Legation Street where we knew we
could see the entering columns. Cannons were
booming in all directions, caused by the Powers
trying to enter by the different gates, shells
exploding and sniping everywhere. We took our
stand at the bridge crossing the canal, from where
we saw large quantities of soldiers, sometimes even
cavalry, come through the Water Gate. We had
scarcely caught from this rather exposed point a

176 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

bird's-eye view of it aU, when a squad of Sikhs
passed us with an officer of high rank, who turned
out to be General Gaselee, riding in the midst of
them. He jumped off his horse on seeing us,
and showing on every inch of him the wear and
tear of an eighty-mile midsummer relief march,
he took our hands, and with tears in his eyes said,
"Thank God, men, here are two women ahve,"
and he most reverently kissed Mrs. Squiers on the
forehead.

It was so good to see him and meet him in this
way. As soon as the despatch had arrived saying
that General Gaselee was to be in command of
the British forces, a smart-looking photograph of
him that someone had cut from a magazine had
been pinned on the Bell Tower, and it was so smart-
looking, and his appearance so correct, that one of
necessity lost interest in his personality ; and now
to see him thus — the military martinet all lost in
this big-hearted, kindly man, who was almost cry-
ing because we were alive ! A short time before
meeting us, on his line of march, he saw poor Pere
Dosio's head stuck on the end of a pole, where the
Chinese had placed it, and General Gaselee feared
that this head might be but the beginning of a

Photo, Elliott &- Fry

GENERAL SIR ALFRED GASELEE

To face page 176

STILL THEY COME ! 177

series of Europeans similarly treated. We had
considered the Italian priest so quiet and docile
that he was not restrained at all, and yesterday he
quietly wandered out into the Chinese lines, and
undoubtedly he was killed before they knew his
mind was gone, although at this stage the Chinese,
I expect, were all too ferocious to have spared
him even had they known of his dementia.

Coming to the " front " this way had to be paid
for in a mild way, and a ricochetting bullet grazed
my ankle, and one tipped the top of my ear.
Chevalier de Melotte, our escort, had his cap shot
off ; but the battle lust had got into our blood, and
it seemed that all this storm of bullets and dropping
shells was but a new and exciting kind of hailstorm,
and that to keep moving from one point to another
was the one necessary thing to do.

The red-turbaned Sikhs and General Gaselee
had come and gone, and now came long lines of
yellow, khaki-uniformed Americans of the 9th In-
fantry, belonging to us, and General Chaffee, well
set-up marines under Colonel Waller — they came
on and on, stumbling through the hot August sun-
light, line after line, without end, and we were
nonplussed when they told us they were but a

23

178 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

small detachment of the United States troops ;
and the tremendous storming of the Ch'ien Men
Gate that was deafening us was being done by the
Americans, who were having no easy time of it, as
the Chinese were firing right down on them from
their protected height.

Now this Water Gate entrance is no longer a
drain, as it used to be, but is rapidly shooting forth
a veritable military kaleidoscope. The yellow lines
have changed into a stream of plodding, heavily-
laden, tiny Japanese soldiers ; then the picturesque
uniforms of the French Zouaves, from Saigon,
with their loose, baggy, cumbersome red trousers,
come into view. We stood transfixed. It seemed
to us as if the whole world had come to our rescue.
Now the passing lines have changed again, and
this time Cossacks, with their black, high leather
boots and soiled white tunics, tramp past us, but
we could not wait for more. We returned to the
British compound, where we found that the galling
fire from the Ch'ien Men Gate, which had done
such damage amongst our attacking troops, had
been stopped by a sortie of our marines down the
Tartar Wall to the gate, where they silenced the
Chinese and the Chinese guns, and helped our in-

A BRILLIANT CHARGE 179

coming soldiers to mount theirs in the erstwhile
Chinese position, from which splendid vantage they
fired directly into the Imperial City, and by this
fire opened two more of the big gates of the For-
bidden City.

This charge down the Tartar Wall to clear it of
Chinese soldiers and Chinese guns by our marines
was a brilliant bit of action. The guard, one and
all, were anxious to help in some way our relief,
which was so hard pressed at the Ch'ien Men Gate,
and they welcomed with shouts of joy the orders
from Sir Claude which enabled them to have a
hand in this last great fight. They were joined by
twenty Russians, the siege friends and almost the
dear " bunkies " of our men, one Russian officer, and
Mr. Squiers, of our diplomatic service (the Chief of
Staff to Sir Claude during the siege), who led the
charge.

The other nationalities have done about the
same sort of thing on entering Peking ; they have
each taken some one gate, and are stationed now ,
at different parts of the city, and, by a hasty
conference of the generals and Ministers, they
have each been given areas to be responsible for
and to police. To police — which means that in

180 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

these districts they will turn their men out to
loot.

The Americans, after taking the Ch'ien Men
Gate and the continuing inner gate directly up to
the Purple City, left them manned, and then retired
to the south-east portion of the Chinese city, which
is contiguous to this district. In all Peking, but
principally in our hnes, confusion is rampant.
This modern " Tower of Babel " will, I suppose,
eventually settle itself or spread itself, as the case
may require. One of the difficulties of late arriving
columns trying to find their headquarters and
marching round and round is the fact that their
headquarters are also on the move, and until they
bump into each other by accident they are at a
loss to know what to do. To-day, at least, no
one can direct anyone else.

Out of this wonderful military kaleidoscope, how
glad I was to see old friends and acquaintances
emerge 1 First to come to me was Colonel
Churchill, the British Military Attach^ to Japan,
who got permission in Tokyo to come up with the
Japanese troops to Peking. On finding me alive
and weU, he returned to the Japanese headquarters
in time to send word with the first official telegram

NEWS OF THE OUTER WORLD 181

of General Fukushima to the War Office in Tokyo
(announcing that the Japanese troops had arrived
in Peking), to my brother-in-law, Lieutenant Key,
who is the American Naval Attach^ to Japan, that
I was safe and weU. How wonderful to think that,
as the troops were marching up to Peking, the
engineers were steadily placing the telegraph-wires,
so that six hours after we were relieved a message
went flying down to the coast with the tidings I
To know that my dear sister in Japan and my
family at home have been relieved from the un-
certainty of my condition, already causes my heart-
strings to loosen up a bit, and the tension is not
quite so painful. A year before, I lunched with
General and Mrs. Chaffee in Havana, and it was
very nice to see him again here in this wicked old
Peking.

He told me that no hours in his life had ever
been so full of dreadful anxiety as the hours before
the dawn of this morning at Tungchou, just
before the starting of the columns for Peking.
They could hear the continuous Chinese fire, and
also the weak but steady spitting of our little
Colt automatic gun, which he knew the marine
guard had with them, and he said that all the

24

182 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

sounds he heard spelled but one sentence, " Shall
we be too late ? Shall we be too late ?"

It seems that the greater part of the allied
armies had spent the night at Tungchou, and it
had been absolutely settled by the commanders
that the following night and morning hours were
to be spent there, which would give time for
scouts to go out and make reasonable reconnais-
sances ; and that by early noon the main body of
the alUes should march on to Peking, each having
a different city gate to take simultaneously. This
plan was very nice and correct and military, but
the Japanese and Russians, who had been eyeing
each other distrustfully, could not stand it any
longer, and throwing to the winds the pledge
that they had given that day in conference,
they both started their columns off double-quick
before dawn for the capital. This breaking of
their promise to the allies at the last moment, so
to speak, rather mixed things up, but perhaps,
after all, it was a relief to the others, because it
then meant they were relieved, too, from any long
concerted action, and they all could begin to
march straight for Peking, which they did.

The night of the 14th was the last night that

THE END OF OUR MESS 183

our siege mess dined together on our little eight-
sided Chinese table, which was generously stocked
with the remaining tins which we had been hoard-
ing for such a long time. Somebody has said,
" There is a sadness about the last time of every-
thing," and truly it was so with us. I felt exactly
as children feel when they have been having a
wUd game of make-believe all day, when the
grown-ups break in and say, "Come, children,
there has been enough of this." And so it was
with us : these terrible times are over, and there is
nothing for us to do but remain passive, and try
and get some sort of equilibrium into our lives
again ; and as we dined together last night there
was a strong feeling, although we did not speak of
it, that nobody but ourselves, who went through
this incredible eight weeks of horror, were ever
going to know really what the siege in Peking has
been, and that we might all talk until doomsday,
but the world will never understand. Perhaps it
is too busy to try. So, as the kiddies say after a
game, " Well, we know who's who, and who has
done what, and that is as near as we ever will
get to teaching the grown-ups, who know it all,
about it."

184 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

August 16.

Captain Reilly, who was killed this morning
while gallantly directing the fire of his battery, was
buried this afternoon in a small open space in
the American Legation. This funeral, however,
was not as pitiful to me as the siege funerals
we have been having all summer. Perhaps
because there was some help and satisfaction to
be got out of the military pomp and honours
which were given him as he was laid away. All
the guard captains were there. Captain Reilly 's
brother-officers and the officials in general assisted.
The rough coffin was generously shrouded in an
enormous flag, and after a short military service
was let down into the wide, deep grave made
for him.

Mr. Conger, as being the chief representative
of things American in Peking, stepped down into
the grave, and began to drag the flag from the
casket, saying at the same time, " There are so
few American flags in Peking, this one can't be
spared." In a moment General Chaffee, the per-
sonification of justice for the dead and wrath for
the living, shouted : " Don't touch that flag. If
it's the last American flag in China it shall be

HOUSELESS AND HOMELESS 185

buried with ReUly." This man, whether address-
ing a Minister Plenipotentiary or an army division,
is instantly obeyed, and so his dead subordinate
was tenderly cared for by him at the end, and his
body was buried wrapped in the flag for which
he had given his life.

All of us, now we have no longer any right
to continue living in the British Legation, feel
that we should leave as soon as possible. The
diplomatic people have houses to go to, and those
who have no houses to go to are usually taken
in by their colleagues, but the great majority are
houseless and homeless.

It is like hunting a needle in a haystack to find
a habitable house anywhere near the Legations,
because, for blocks and blocks, almost everything is
burnt. To find any decent Chinese houses one
has to go too far from our lines to be really safe,
as even now there are plenty of snipers still in
Peking. Some wretched, dirty, and filthy temples
have partially escaped burning, owing to the fact
that almost up to the time that our troops arrived
they were used by the Chinese as strongholds for
themselves and Boxers. Into these holes people
must go for lack of anything better.

186 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

Yesterday we spent the entire day moving from
our tiny British Legation quarters to our own
house in the American Legation compound, and
such a difficulty we had ■ in getting coolies to
carry our many trunks and boxes !

The Chinese servants, almost without exception,
were oiF looting or trying to find places for their
families. They would not work, and it was not
until 6.30 in the afternoon that we could hand over
our two rooms to Dr. Poole. Mrs. Squiers is
busy nursing little Bard ; he has gone down with
typhoid fever within the last few days, and we are
all dreadfully worried about him. He is now at
our Legation, in an isolated building. It is hard to
nurse typhoid without fresh milk and ice, but we
hope to get them before long. Mrs. Squiers is also
nursing Captain Myers (who has developed a case
of typhoid) and Dr. Lippitt, thus making two cases
of typhoid in our little compound.

I had a chat to-day with Sir Claude Macdonald
and M. de Giers, the Russian Minister, and both
volunteered two highly comphmentary criticisms
of things American during the siege. One was
that the services of Herbert Scjuie rs had been
simply invaluable during the most trying part

THE U.S. MARINES 187

of the summer ; they both said — and surely, unless
it was the case, these two people with such widely
different points of view would never have both felt
it — that he held both people and things together
when people did not even dare whisper their fears
to each other ; that there might have been a
possible division of forces during the siege owing to
exaggerated racial feelings. The other criticism
was that our marines lead in their intelligent work
as soldiers. The accuracy of their shooting is extra-
ordinary, and their abihty to step forward, one after
the other, on the death or retirement of an officer
or non-commissioned officer and take his place is
remarkable. They show the greatest aptitude to
command, and are in no way disconcerted by the
sudden increase of responsibility. In many in-
stances which could be cited this was proved.

The British have never been known unneces-
sarily to sing the praises of other nationalities, and
I was very happy to have this judge of things
mihtary tell me exactly what I felt and had seen
from the beginning of the siege.

August 18.

Yesterday General Chaffee told me he proposed
to send the first American convoy down the river

188 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

to Tien-tsin on Monday, the 20th, A boat-load
of convalescents and several boat-loads of mis-
sionaries will make up the convoy. Fargo Squiers,
my maid, and I, will have our own httle boat, and
will be sent with this contingent for protection to
Tien-tsin, where the Consul will be instructed to
look out for us until we take passage for Japan
to join my family.

Things in Peking are in a terrible state of chaos.
Generals and Ministers know as httle as anyone in
the respect that they never decide on anything.
Of course, they are awaiting instructions from
home.

Yesterday I was en route from the British
Legation to the American, when a big Sikh
addressed me most respectfully, whacking his
chest, which was bulging in tremendous curves:
" Mem-sahib give me two dollars, I give mem-
sahib nice things." There had just been an order
issued to all British troops that the loot they
procured each day must be turned in to some
appointed official, so I fancied that this man must
have wanted to get rid of something which he
might find difficult to explain if found on his
person. I. of course, had no money with me — it

VARIED LOOT! 189

was the one thing we had had no use for for two
months — but I returned to our Legation and
procured two dollars, for my curiosity was aroused,
and returning hastily to where I had left my man
standing ; and then, in the most evident perturba-
tion, he unloaded what he thought was only a
proper equivalent for the two dollars which he had
asked of me — an exquisite gold-mounted cloisonne
clock and two huge, struggling hens !

He was so anxious to be gone that before I
knew it I had the clock in one hand and those
wiiggling old chickens in the other. They pecked
at my hand, and I almost dropped them ; but when
one has been on short rations for two months one
can stand Avithout complaint a few difficulties in
procuring food. The clock was a joy to look at,
and the chickens were so big and so old ; they
made wonderful soup for the dear httle kiddies,
who, thank Heaven ! are all still alive, but very
much run down from the siege.

This morning Baron von Rahden came for break-
fast, our conversation being, as usual, carried on
in French. He told me he had procured for me a
good sable coat — and when a Russian speaks of
good sables they are good, for that nationality are

190 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

expert judges of furs. I wanted to accept the
coat in the spirit it was offered, as a testimonial of
a charming friendship, formed under extraordinary
circumstances, but owing to the intrinsic value of
the garment I had to decline it. I don't think he
understood very well my refusing it, and I had
within an hour the pleasure of seeing him present
it to another woman, who accepted it without a
qualm, and without giving him, I thought, very
many thanks. My soul was torn with conflicting
emotions all day, and in the afternoon a Belgian,
of whom I had seen a good deal during the siege,
brought me a tortoise-shell bracelet, set with hand-
some pearls, which he had taken from the arm of
a Chinese officer whom he had killed. I surprised
myself by promptly accepting it. My nerves could
not have stood it, and I took it rather than have
a repetition of the sequel to the sable-coat episode.
When the rich Chinese inhabitants left Peking in
such a hurry they in many cases took their treasure,
their favourite wives and themselves out of the
capital with the greatest expedition possible, while
the young girls and women of their households
thus left in countless instances promptly committed
suicide, usually by hanging themselves, or drowning

THE QUESTION OF LOOTING 191

themselves in the wells of their courtyards. The
men who are throughout Peking now looting,
constantly run into these silent testimonials, show-
ing how these people all preferred self-inflicted death
to what they knew they could expect when the
civilized and Christian soldiers of the West should
be turned loose.

Yesterday a very animated generals' conference
was held, the great question being whether there
should be a unanimous effort to stop all looting and
sacking, or whether it should be continued. The
Japanese, French, and Russians were absolutely
pro ; English and Americans, con, the latter having
the strictest orders from President McKinley against
any looting. The English, although giving their
vote for no looting, added they should continue to
place " in safe-keeping all valuable things " found in
the district given them to police. This, of course,
gives them practically the right to loot, although
whatever is brought in has to be placed in one
place, where they have an auction later, and
the officially prescribed amount pro rata is given
to the officers and men, so that they are really
doing just what the other nations are doing, only
in a somewhat more legahzed way. They say that

192 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

these Indian troops, the Sikhs and the Rajputs,
are something horrible when they get started, and
occasionally the British officer who is supposed to
always be on these parties sent out to procure " the
valuable things for safe-keeping" has to shoot a
man to keep them in discipline.

The rumours come in that now the whole of
Peking is being looted, and worse, and each
Legation, closed up in its little compound, feels
like a little question-mark of respectability, sur-
rounded by a whole page of wicked, leering
horrors.

Our gates are all closed tight, and occasionally
we hear thundering down Legation Street as
whole troops of half-starved horses, ponies, and
donkeys (animals which have been left by their
owners in their stables, and which have managed
by some means to free themselves, either by looters
untying them, or perhaps fire freeing them), dash
past at top speed all together in a fury of liberty
regained. And dangerous it is for anyone to be on
the road when one of these wild troops race down
the street, for he will certainly be trampled to
death. After a time these mad collections of
animals become tame and quiet from hunger and

THE RESULT OF THE SIEGE : IN THE AMERICAN
MINISTER'S HOUSE

CopyngJU, M. S. Woodiunrd

THE RESULT OF THE SIEGE : FRENCH LEGATION RUINS

To face page 192

DEVASTATION 193

exhaustion, and are willing enough to be led into
almost any courtyard. Everything is unusual in
this wonderful Peking. This morning I walked
with Colonel Churchill and Captain Mallory on the
Tartar Wall and down it to the Ha Ta Men Gate,
where we went down the Ramp and walked all
over the tremendously exposed German and French
lines with their barricades and defences. In the
German compound the havoc wrought is unimagin-
able. Whole sides of the houses have been battered
down, in some instances one or two walls only
left standing ; and as for the French compound,
every house, every building, and every wall has
been levelled to old Mother Earth again, and
nothing but the little house of the concierge at the
gate, which flies the French flag, is left standing.

On seeing this one can understand why the
French at the conference not only wanted Peking
to be looted and sacked, but to be burnt as well.
As the whole place can be inspected now, Mr.
Gamewell tells me that four big miaes, almost
completed, have been found, and, had not the allies
arrived when they did, that the following night
would have seen some terriflc explosions in the
British Legation, the Hanlin Library, and on the

25

194 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

Tartar Wall even. The mortality of the siege
would thus have been doubled by twenty-four
hours' further delay by our troops.

Baron von Ketteler's body was accidentally dis-
covered on the 16th by the Russian troops who
were passing near the Tsung-li Yamen, very near
the spot where he had been murdered. The body
had been thrown into an old wooden box and left.
The polite communication which had been sent to
the Baroness von Ketteler during the semi-armistice
days of the siege that her husband's body was
lying in state at the Tsung-li Yamen was thus
proved to be an utter fabrication on their part.
To-day his formal obsequies took place in the
German Legation, the doyen of the Corps, the
Spanish Minister, reading a short address, which
was as well put as it was as hard for Baroness von
Ketteler to hear. I did not go to the ceremony,
however, for I felt as if I had attended more than
enough to last me the rest of a long life.

Although the alUes arrived on the afternoon of
the 14th, it was not until the afternoon of the 16th
that the Japanese troops went to the reUef of the
Pei-t'ang, where Archbishop Favier had held his
own so long. They had had tremendous losses by

PEI-T'ANG 195

attack and mines which exploded in their midst —
300 Chinese converts killed, 75 orphan children,
and 60 foreigners, including 2 French officers who
had been sent with the 20 French marines to help
them at the beginning of the siege.

This huge fortified cathedral was the only other
mission in or about Peking which was strong
enough to hold out. At four o'clock they were
relieved, and at seven o'clock the French Minister
arrived to make inquiries about his compatriots.
All the commanders who have inspected the
Pei-t'ang say its defence was a wonderful one.

At every meal now Mrs. Squiers's guests are
most numerous, charming, and interesting. The
servants seem to be all back, and although the
days are filled with incredible. stories of what the
different nationalities are " doing " in Peking, our
evenings are always dehghtful, as they are made up
of the companionship of the most delightful men in
Peking, who, when they arrive to dine, throw off
the disagreeable features of these war times, and
devote themselves with happiness to this oppor-
tunity, probably their first for many weeks, of
enjoying the ordinary cheerful amenities of life ;
and while these nice parties smack of the camp —

196 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

for everyone is in uniform — it only makes things
more interesting, for they help to cheer up the tired
siege people. It is the same everywhere in the
different Legations : each nationality is surrounded
by its military, with a sprinkling of more or less
unattached secretaries and Ministers Plenipoten-
tiary, who are temporarily without Legations to
go to or troops to attend to.

Sir Robert Hart is very busy with his mountain-
high accumulated Customs work to be attended to,
but he manages often to drop in to tiffin or dinner.

Colonel MiUs, General Chaffee's Chief of Staff,
an old friend of our host's, comes frequently to
this hospitable house, as does Colonel Waller, a
delightful person, with his young officers. Lieu-
tenant David Porter and Lieutenant Harding.
Colonel Mallory and Colonel Churchill, the British
Military Attach^ to Tokyo, who is an old friend
of mine, and many other charming people, would
make this list a long one should I attempt to
make it complete.

Colonel Churchill is returning, as I am, as soon
as he can to Tokyo. He intends to go down the
river with Miss Armstrong and Sir Claude's little
girls with the first convoy sent down by the

t.

^^.,

MRS. HOOKER, MISS ARMSTRONG, LADY MACDONALD'S LITTLE GIRLS,
FARGO SQUIERS, AND COLONEL ARTHUR CHURCHILL

To face pLti^f ig6

PLANS FOR DEPARTURE 197

British, which will be a day after General Chaffee
sends down his.

Fargo Squiers, my maid, and I, will then meet
him and Miss Armstrong and the children in Tien-
tsin, and we will make our journey to Japan
by the first way that presents itself. He thinks
that Admiral Bruce, who is in command of the
British fleet at Taku, wiU put a despatch-boat at
our disposal, and that we will be sent immediately
over to Yokohama.

In coming up to Peking Colonel Churchill
brought me a very kind invitation from Admiral
and Mrs. Bruce — I had known them for some time
— to come to Mrs. Bruce at Wei Hai Wei, the
British concession near Chefoo, in case I was ill or
needed a rest before starting for Tokyo. So, with
the letters to Colonel Moale, in command of our
troops in Tien-tsin, to do everything possible for
us, Mr. Squiers, Mrs. Squiers, and I, feel that
Fargo and I will have an interesting and reason-
ably comfortable trip over to Japan, where I know
my sister is counting the days until I return
to her.

General Chaffee has delayed sending the first
convoy down until the 21st, which gives me a

26

198 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

little more time before starting. It has made me
feel that really, after having been shot upon all
summer from the Imperial walls, I should like a
peep inside before I leave Peking.

The city has been portioned oiF to the different
generals, and the English and Americans have a
district where there is very little to loot. To-day a
French officer of high rank, wishing to get treasure
out of a palace that was in our lines, came to
Mr. Conger and asked him if he would allow him
to change the boundary a trifle. The Minister
naively agreed to the Frenchman's purely disin-
terested request, and the consequence is there are a
lot of indignant American mihtary men wandering
about trying to understand why this change in the
map should have been made without consulting
them.

August 19.

I talked over with Mrs. Squiers my great wish
to see something of the wonderful Purple City
before leaving, and while she was too busy nursing
little Bard to go with me, she saw no reason why,
with ample protection, and escorted by an officer,
I should not ride through this mysterious and
beautiful park.

AN UNNECESSARY REFUSAL 199

1 had expected General Chaffee would give me
an order to enter by the Ch'ien Men Gate and
its continuing three gates, and pass practically
through our own lines, upon his hearing that I
wished to do so. He was usually so amiable when
I asked him for anything, that this time, much to
my surprise, he became very angry, and, pounding
his fist on the table, he assured me that he would
not allow me to even ride through the Imperial
City, giving as his refusal the only reason that
"there were sights of war there which no
American girl should see," and pounding his fist
a second time to emphasize the fact. AU of which
was ridiculous, as the sights of war referred to
were simply the heaps of corpses which surrounded
the different gates of the Imperial City by which
the allies had entered, and, as a consequence of
the defeat of the Chinese, the dead were stUl there.
He was right, inasmuch as these are not pretty
things to see ; but as I had been in the midst of war
for two months, and had seen aU these things many
times, I did not feel that it was just in him to deny
me the privilege now of being able to get a bird's-
eye view of this wonderful park, which he might
have done by allowing a special permit to go round

200 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

it on horseback before leaving. But one can't fuss
with people who deny you things for what they think
is for your own good, especially when the person
in question happens to be General Chaffee.

After this sad refusal, the first person I met was
Baron von Rahden, who, on hearing my tale of
woe, was delighted to hear that it was one which
was so easy to remedy. As General Chaffee had the
power to write a permit to go into the Forbidden
City, so had the Russian Commander-in-Chief. He
flew off, and in a few minutes returned, bearing an
order from the headquarters of the Russian troops
giving him power to escort me through the
Imperial City, with a company of Cossacks as a
miUtary guard, so that we could come to no
possible harm 'from snipers or marauding parties.

I was aU excitement to be off. I felt hke a
naughty child, and was afraid to stop a moment,
fearing something might still stop me. But we
could not start, as there was no horse or pony in
the Legation, and the Cossacks had only their
necessary number. Von Rahden was a resourceful
person, and told me that while I was putting on
a riding-habit he would have a horse got ready
for me. He sent his men off with the word that

AN INTERESTING RIDE 201

some sort of an animal for me to ride must be
here in fifteen minutes, and when I was ready to
go I found the Cossacks all lined up and Von
Rahden holding two of the sorriest, thinnest-
looking horses I had ever seen. His men had
stopped a stampeded troop of animals out in
I^egation Street, and these two were the best.
The horse he selected was half mad with fear, but
I finally managed to mount him, and off we
started, lickety split, Von Rahden and myself
leading, and the half-company of Cossacks thun-
dering after us. This dashing down deserted streets
and rushing up slight grades made me realize that
one was no longer a prisoner, at any rate.

We rode for a long time through absolutely
deserted streets, at all moments on the qui vive for
shots from closed doors, or for a possible ambush
at each turning in the road. Our horses shied at
corpses in our path, and we were listening for un-
heard noises from apparently empty houses, many
of which had tiny little foreign flags flying from
some window or a painted foreign flag roughly
executed over the door, the ovsTiers hoping these
Western insignia might protect their property from
looters.

202 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

Before entering the Forbidden City we passed
through three series of walls, at the entrance to
which were piled innumerable dead Chinese, silent
proof that many lives were given in the vain
attempt to protect the Imperial City ; but after we
were once inside, these horrors were forgotten in
the grandiose landscape gardening, which almost
overwhelmed us by its magnificent simplicity. We
crossed the wonderful white marble bridges which
spanned the artificial waterways, and the glorious
lotus-flowers were all in bloom on the banks and
partially in the water. They are such gorgeous, big
flowers ; they are like the Chinese architecture —
wonderful in big, sweeping lines. We rode on
through this semi-cultured landscape, where every
detail was so carefully attended to that the ensemble
was a complete joy to the senses, and after the eight
weeks we had been barricaded in our Legation
district this park seemed like heaven.

We climbed the Coal Hill, and got the only view
I ever had of the Purple City. We were at such
a height that we could look right down and get a
good glimpse of the plan of these palaces, besides
obtaining a gorgeous general view of the whole
Imperial City. On descending the hill, I must say

►J

s

<

o
u

THE PURPLE CITY 203

I was disappointed that the palaces in this Holy of
Holies were not more imposing. They were low,
long buildings constructed of the gorgeous Imperial
yellow tiles. The extraordinarily rich colouring of
these buildings made one forget momentarily the
plainly low architectural hnes. Unfortunately, we
had no permission to enter these closely-guarded,
mysterious precincts. We hated to leave this spot
of beautiful trees, long avenues and vistas, and,
above aU, the pure air, to return to our half-burnt,
whoUy ill-smelling Legation district.

At nine o'clock all the Anglo-Saxons sang a Te
Deum on the tennis-court. Mr. Norris conducted
the service, and Dr. Smith, the author of " Chinese
Characteristics," made a most stirring address.
We all surely sang it with hearts full of a thankful-
ness we had rarely ever before felt.

August 20,

To-day I took a walk all over the German lines
with Mr. von Bergen, Second Secretary of the
Legation, and, in fact, all over our old siege lines,
and said a cheerful good-bye to it all. To-night
Mrs. Squiers has a farewell dinner, and to-morrow,
at 6.30 a.m., we start with ourselves and our
baggage in United States Army schooners en route

204 BEHIND THE SCENES IN PEKING

to Tungchow, where we take primitive house-
boats to sail down the Pei-ho to Tien-tsin, A
detachment from the 9th United States Infantry is
to accompany us, and everything is to be very
mihtary in this escort for the first convoy. How
absurd to compare my coming to Peking and my
leaving it ! I came up on Sir Robert Hart's
private car in a few hours, and will go down to the
coast in an antiquated Chinese boat, which wiU
take as many days as the train took hours. And
so, floating down the river, I will have much time
to think quietly about this wonderful siege, to
forget the disagreeable and the bad, and to re-
member the great and the good.

INDEX

American Legation. See Lega-
tious

Axmstrong, Miss, 17, 23

Austrian Legation. See Lega-
tions

Belgian Legation. See Legations
Below, Von, Secretary to German

Legation, 14 ; effect of siege on,

100
Bergen, Von, Second Secretary to

German Legation, 203
Boxers, the, rising of, 7, 16, 23 ;

captures of, 29, 35, 76, 152;

outrages by, 38, 57
Brent, Mrs., 17

British Legation. See Legations
Bruce, Admiral, 197
Bruce, Mount, 2 ; ascent of, 4

Carles, Mr., British Consul at
Tien-tsin, 148, 149

Cartier, M. de, 142

Cassini, Countess Marguerite, 5

Chaffee, General : arrival at Tien-
tsin, 158 ; the relief of Peking,
177, 181, 199; a funeral inci-
dent, 184 ; the convoy to Tien-
tsin, 187, 197

Chamot, Swiss proprietor of the
Peking Hotel, provides food for
the besieged, 114

Cheshire, Mr., American Lega-
tion, waiting for the relief troops,
15, 21 ; his bravery, 77

Ch'ien Men Gate, burning of, 25 ;

firing of cannon from, 69 ;

arrival of the reMef force, 179
China, Empress of, and Prince

Ching, 132 ; and Li Hung

Chang, 163, 164
Ching, Prince, head of the Tsung-li

Yamen, 69, 92 ; correspondence

with the besieged, 132, 137, 138
Christians, Chinese, outrages on,

35, 38 ; located at the Fu, 75,

132 ; their want of food, 161
Churchill, Colonel, British Military

Attache to Japan, 180, 196
Cologan, Seiior, Spanish Minister

at Peking, 43 ; his illness, 120
Coltman, Dr. and Mrs., American

physician at Peking, 20, 52, 79
Conger, Mr. and Mrs., American

Minister at Peking, 52, 62, 120 ;

message from the Yamen, 136 ;

a funeral incident, 184 ; his

naiveness, 198

Dana Collection, the, 14

Dosio, Pere, the Superior of Nan-

t'ang, his loss of mind, 131 ;

Chinese outrage on, 176
Dutch Legation. See Legations

Favier, Archbishop, the Superior
of Pei-t'ang, 37, 194

Feng-tai railway-station, 4 ; burn-
ing of, 8

Fisher, a marine, death of, 125

205

206

INDEX

Food-supply during the siege, 58,
73, 85, 106, 108, 109 ; an amus-
ing incident, 146

French Legation. See Legations

Fu, the, Chinese Christians located
at, 72, 132, 161

Fukushima, General, commander
of the Japanese relief forces,
167

Gamewell, Bev., a missionary, a
mainstay to the besieged, 112,
193

Gaselee, General, cotomander of
British relief forces, 149, 167,
176

German Legation. See Lega-
tions

Giers, M. de, Russian Minister at
Peking, 43, 120 ; message from
the Yamen, 136 ; and the Ameri-
cans, 186

Giers, Madame de, her wonderful
help in nursing, 143

Hanlin Library, the, 107, 116
Hart, Sir Eobertj Inspector -

General of Customs, 13, 18, 50 ;

death of Oliphant, 105 ; letters

from the Yamen, 139, 151
Ha Ta Men Gate, defence of, 22,

33,92
Hsu Ching Cheng, Director of

Imperial University, 156

"International" cannon, the,

116
Italian Legation. See Legations

James, Dr. H., 75 ; murder of,
76

Japanese Legation. See Lega-
tions

Joostens, M., Belgian Minister,
141, 142

Jung Lu, communications with
the besieged, 132, 184, 159

Kempff, Admiral, 14, 16, 17

Ketfceler, Baron von, German
Minister at Peking: Boxer in-
cident, 24, 25 ; murder of, 45 ;
discovery of body, 194

Kettles, Mr., the Belgian Consul,
141

Knobel, M., Dutch Minister at
Peking, 43, 120; the chicken
episode, 146, 147

Kroupenski, Mr., Eussian Secre-
tary, 23

Legations : Boxer outrages, 7 et
eeq.; arrival of the marines,
15 ; weakness of the American,
18, 31 ; waiting for the reUef
party, 21, 27 ; attempts to burn,
25 et seq. ; alarming state of,
31 ; rescue of Chinese Chris-
tians, 35 et seq.j Chinese offer
an escort to the coast, 42, 159 ;
murder of Baron von Ketteler,
45, 194 ; strength of the British
Legation, 48, 72 ; American
women and children transferred
to the British, 48, 50 ; American
missionaries brought in, 49 ;
life in, 60 et seq., 119 et seq. ;
evacuation and burning of the
Belgian, 56 ; attempt on the
Dutch, 57 ; supply of food, 58
et seq. , 86, 108 et seq., 160 ; in
great danger, 61 et seq.; evacu-
ation of Austrian and fright of
the French, 68 ; general panic,
64 ; fighting the fire, 65 et seq.;
the crowded hospital, 74, 90,
91, 102, 103, 105. 116, 142, 143 ;
a sortie, 75 ; murder of Dr.
James, 76 ; armistice, 78 ; re-
newed attacks on, 80 et seq.;
attack on German, 92 et seq. ;
an unsuccessful sortie, 95 ; racial
friendships and animosities, 95,
96, 121, 122, 135 ; Japanese
valour, 97; boldness of the

INDEX

207

Chinese, 98; successful charge
down the wall, 99, 100; fulierals,
102 et seq.j discovery and suc-
cessful use of an old cannon,
115, 116 ; plague of flies, 123,
124 ; Captain Strouts mortally
wounded, 125 ; a bad day, 125
et seq.; wave of despondency,
129 et seq.; a missionary be-
comes insane, 181 ; communi-
cations with the Yamen, 132-
134, 136, 145, 151, 159, 163, 169 ;
Chinese send in food, 138 ; news
erf the rehef force, 140; a chicken
episode, 146 ; messenger sent to
Tien-tsin, 149; description of
the barricades, 151 et seq.j
letters from Tien-tsin, 157 ; food
running short, 160 ; more severe
attacks, 165, 168, 171 ; good
news, 167 ; arrival of the relief
force, 171 et seq.j the question
of loot, 191 ; the state of the
German Legation, 193 ; dis-
covery of mines, 193

Li Hung Chang, 163; and the
Empress of China, 164, 165 ;
purchase of guns, 171

Linqua Su, temple of, description
of, 2 ; defence of, 9, 10

Lippitt, Dr., 34 ; wounded, 91,
142 ; typhoid fever, 186

McCaUa, Captain, in command of
the Japanese marines, 15 ; re-
turns to Tien-tsin, 16 ; and the
relief party, 21, 34

Macdonald, Sir Claude, British
Minister at Peking, elected Com-
mander-in-Chief, 120, 121 ; and
Von Rostand, 122 ; communi-
cations from the Yamen, 182,
133 ; and the relief force, 173,
179, 186

Macdonald, Lady, and her chil-
dren, 17 ; and Baroness von
Ketteler, 46 ; lodges the Ameri-

can missionaries in the chapel,
50 ; food-supply, 85, 160

McKinley, President of the United
States, forbids looting, 191

Magi-poo, rioting at, 14

Mallory, Colonel, sends news to
the besieged, 158

Marines, the, arrival at Peking,
15 ; on the sick-list, 34 ; sorties,
85, 41, 99 ; death of Captain
Strouts, 126; the reheving force,
179, 187

Martin, Dr. A. W. P., Director of
Imperial University in Peking,
23 ; and the fire at the Lega-
tions, 68

Melotte, Chevalier de, his gajlant
defence, 66 ; arrival of the
relief force, 175, 177

Merghelynckem, M., First Secre-
tary of Belgian Legation, 56;
saves the life of the French
commanding officer, 117

Methodist Mission, burning of,
57

Myers, Captain, commander of
the American marines in
Peking, 17, 18, 21 ; makes suc-
cessful sorties, 25, 99, 100 ; bis
hardships, 33 ; saves the Dutch
Legation, 57 ; wounded, 103,
186

Mills, Colonel, General Chaffee's
Chief of Staff, 196

Missions : arming of, 34, 35 ; re-
moval into the Legations, 49,
51 ; work of Protestant and
Boman CathoUc missionaries,
57 ; burning of Methodist, 57

Morrison, Dr., Times' correspon-
dent : his kindness, 9 ; stoned
by rioters, 14 ; his advice to
the Legation Ministers, 44;
his hard work and cheerfulness,
69 ; and the Chinese Chris-
tians at the Fu, 75 ; wounded,
126

208

INDEX

Nan-t'ang, burning of the, 131

Karahara, death of, 142

Neih, Chinese General, defeat
and suicide of, 141

Norregarde, a Swedish missionary,
becomes insane, 131

Norris, Rev., English chaplain at
Peking : the funeral of Oli-
phant, 105 ; works hard on the
fortifications, 118; holds thanks-
giving service, 203

Oliphant, funeral of, 105

Pei-t'ang,the, Koman Catholic for-
tress cathedral, 36, 37 ; relief
of, 194

Peking — see also Legations :
Boxer rising, 7 et seq. ; burning
of Feng-tai, 8 ; positions of the
Legations, 12 ; telegraph broken,
21 ; assassination of the Japan-
ese Chancellor, 22 ; burning of
the missions, etc., 24 e^ Beq.y
fires in, 25 et seq.j description
of, 26 ; treachery of the Imperial
Chinese troops, 45, 47 ; burning
of the Belgian Legation, 56 ;
burning of the Hanlin Library,
71 ; entry of the relief force, 173
et seq. ; looting, 192

Pethick, WilliaiH, Li Hung
Chang's private secretary, 11 ;
his opinion of the state of China,
19, 20 ; his advice on the Yamen
communication, 132 ; and the
antique China episode, 165

Pichon, M., the French Minister
in Peking, 43, 78, 87, 120 ; the
Legion of Honour, 139

Poole, Dr., surgeon to the British
Legation, 50,, 52, 53, 59 ; the
Legation fire, 68

Porcelain, antique, 14

Bahden, Baron von, commander
of Eussian Legation^force, 25,

30, 96 ; and his undrilled sol-
diers, 110 ; the defences of the
Legations, 152 ; the forbidden
city, 200

Eeilly, Captain, death of, 184

Boman Catholics in Peking, 36,
114

Bostand, Von, Austrian Charge
d' Affaires, 117 ; and Sir Claude
Macdonald, 121

Eussian Legation. See Lega-
tions

Salvage Baggi, Marquis, 43, 86,120
Seymour, Admiral, 44, 51
Shiba, Colonel, Japanese com-
mander at Peking : a sortie,
75 ; description of, 95, 148
Shimonosekl, Treaty of, 163
Squiers, Herbert, Secretary of the
American Legation, 6 ; en route
for Peking, 10 ; his ooUeotion
of antique porcelains, 14 ; his
hospitality, 15, 49, 73 ; begin-
ning of the siege, 22 ; sends
communication to Tien-tsin, 28,
29, 34 ; removal to the British
Legation, 53 ; renovates an old
cannon, 115 ; becomes Sir
Claude Macdonald's chief of
staff, 134; communications with
the Yamen, 136; the defences
of the Legations, 152 ; leads a
sortie, 179; Sir Claude Macdon-
ald's opinion of, 186
Squiers, Fargo, his brave adven-
ture, 58 ; and the Legation fire,
68
Strouts, Captain, commander of
the British marines in Peking,
18 ; a sortie, 25 ; Legation
fire, 30 ; mortally wounded,
125
Su, Prince, 98

Taku Forts, taking of, 49
Tien-tsin, first relief force sent to

INDEX

209

Peking from, 15 ; message re-
ceived by besieged from, 140 ;
the capture of, 141, 158

Tsung-li Yamen, the Chinese
Foreign Office, send a guard to
protect the temple of Linqua
Su, 6; Swedish missionary's
interview with, 131 ; communi-
cates with the Legations, 136
et seq., 145, 159, 166, 169 ; send
in food, 139

Tung Fu-hsiang, 51, 92

" Tungchou," the Boman Catho-
lic church, burning of, 24

Velde, Dr., German surgeon at
Peking, the excellence of his
work, 73, 109, 113, 143

WaUer, Colonel, 177, 196
Warren, Mr., mortaJly wounded,

124
Water Gate, entry of Sikhs

through the, 174

THE END

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