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The path was much shorter than that visited in Nankow, and the carving of the animals was less perfect. The avenue ended with a gateway of three arches, which we did not pass through, but which contained a memorial tablet mounted on a huge tortoise; beyond this there was a long oblong building with an effective terrace roof; doors were placed in each corner of the walled enclosure.
This is a distance of eight miles, or sixteen there and back to Nankow. The cavalcade left in the same fashion as on the day previous. Our way led us over the hills, an irregular roadway, first through a field and past two little villages. We then came to a magnificently carved pailow of white marble, fifty feet high, eighty feet wide, and divided into five openings by square pillars.
In the agreeable company of one of the finest men in China, I once made a journey to the Nankow Pass in the Great Wall, north of Peking. My friend had a beard like a Welsh bard's, and, though a younger man than his years, forty-four, there was not a native who saw him, who did not gaze upon him with awe, as a possible Buddha, and not one who attributed to him an age less than eighty.
Presently a dilapidated vehicle came by in which sat an old man. The Prince ordered him to give the cart to the concubine and sent her to his palace where a proper conveyance was secured, and she overtook the court at the Nankow pass. At the audiences, this concubine was always in company with the Empress Yehonala, standing at her left.
To the average European, Peking's history begins in 1900; you cannot get away from that time, and after a while you tire of it, and you tire, too, of all the bustle and blaze of colour. And you climb again to the top of the wall that seems to belong to another world, and you look off toward the great break in the hills, to Nankow, the Gate of the South.
There were different features to each of the Ming tombs, but, having seen the representative one, we were content to return to Nankow, as we were to take the afternoon train for Peking. While the trip to the Great Wall and the Ming tombs is somewhat fatiguing, the interest is so great as to reward one for the exertion.
The pass of Nankow contains the remains of several old forts, which were maintained in former times to protect China from Mongol incursions. The natural position is a strong one, and a small force could easily keep at bay a whole army. Just outside the northern entrance of the pass there is a branch of one of the "Great Walls" of China. It was built some time before the Great Wall.
About twenty miles from Pekin is the village of Sha-ho, near two old stone bridges that span a river now nearly dried away. The village is a sort of half-way halting place between. Pekin and the Nankow pass, a rocky defile twelve or fifteen miles long.
Taken altogether, the view from the Nankow Pass is one of the most magnificent I have ever seen, and, of course, entirely unlike any other. It was a glorious day, and all the elements seemed to conspire to make it a perfect occasion.
There is absolutely no use of my trying to say the name of the place he has started for. Even when written it looks too wicked to pronounce. It is near the Pass that leads into the Gobi Desert. Jack wrote me to go to Shanghai and he would join me later. I am writing him that I can't start till the fate of Sada San is settled for better or for worse. NANKOW, CHINA. February, 1912.
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