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Audaciously driven into the ground but twenty or thirty feet from our outposts, these gaudy flags of black and yellow, and many other colours, flaunt us and mock us with the protection assured by the Tsung-li Yamen.
From his yamen in the interior of the city, when he found that the English hesitated to advance beyond the walls, he incited the populace to fresh efforts of hostility, and, in order to check their increasing audacity, it was resolved to send a force into the city to effect the capture of Yeh.
We camped on a dry rice dyke where a fringe of jungle separated us from the nearest house. As soon as the tents were up I announced our coming to the mandarin and requested an interview at five o'clock. Wu and I found the yamen to be a large well-built house, delightfully cool and exhibiting several foreign articles which evinced its proximity to Burma.
Kweiliang apparently possessed powers of the most extensive character; and he hastened to inform Lord Elgin, who had taken up his residence in a beautiful yamen in Tientsin, that he had received the emperor's authority to discuss and decide everything.
For two weeks Ida, with some other Chinese girls, was in hiding in the home of a friendly carpenter, while the missionaries were hidden in the governor's yamen.
But there came a time when living children were brought to the mission for sale as food; whereupon the mission made formal complaint in the yamen, and the Fu at once issued a proclamation checking the absurd tales about the foreigners, and ordering the citizens, under many pains and penalties, to treat the foreigners with respect.
So it was quite a little band of disciples that walked along the river bank up to Go-ko-khi. Mackay preached at all the villages along the route, and visited the homes of Christians. One day, as they passed a yamen or Chinese court-house where a mandarin was trying some cases, they stepped in to see what was going on. At one end of the room sat the mandarin who was judge.
For although the Guardian of the Nine Gates a species of Manchu warden or grand constable of Peking has been officially warned that foreign guards, whose arrival has been duly authorised by the Tsung-li Yamen, may be a little late and that consequently the Ch'ien Men, or the Middle Gate, should be kept open a couple of hours longer, the chief guardian may become nervous and irate and incontinently shut the gates.
Decrees encouraging the Boxers, organizing them tinder prominent Imperial officers, provisioning them, and even granting them large sums in the name of the Empress Dowager, are known to exist. Members of the Tsung-li Yamen who counseled protection of the foreigners were beheaded.
"Doubtless he is fighting single-handed against the armed men by whom the place is surrounded," said another; "or perhaps he is constructing an underground road from the Yamen to Peking, so that we may all escape when the town is taken.
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