Standing in the same place, but looking westward, 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 live 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.”

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, but 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 beheaded because they are suspected of being pro-foreign—Hsu Ching Cheng, Director of the Imperial University and President of the Manchurian Railway, 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.

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 will 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-tsin—from Consul Ragsdale to Mr. Conger; from the German Consul to Von Below, the German Chargé d’Affaires; from 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.

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 carpenters 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 American Minister seemed to promise good things from its very military brevity: “I arrived this morning.—Chaffee.”

All the Consuls seemed overcome by the gravity of their own situation, for all 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 and discussed the comparative merits of the remaining 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.

August 7.

The day before yesterday an announcement was made in the Peking Gazette, the Imperial newspaper organ of the capital (these occasional bits of information we get by bribing heavily 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 Legations 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 punishment.

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 Jung Lu had been appointed to escort us. We replied, as usual, that we desired first to communicate with our Governments on the subject, 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 complaints 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.”

August 8.

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 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 ill 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 courtyard 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 probably 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 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 Doré’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 brown and hard, the children are naked, and the adults wear little, but one and all are enveloped with the agony of relentless, hideous starvation. The white rice which we have used in the compound 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 telegraph 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 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 political sinecures, and expect no monetary remuneration from the Government or throne. At the end of the interview the Empress made a sign to him to indicate 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, delicate-tinted rose vase he had procured. On leaving the audience-chamber, his eyes sparkled when a large cloth-of-gold bag, containing some heavy article, was handed to him by a eunuch. He flew to his own palace, hardly able 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 examination to determine the dynasty during which this treasure was produced, but the date of this especial paste was lost, with its other technical classifications. 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.

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 absolutely, 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.

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 completely 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. Will the Tsung-li Yamen try and “save their faces” by continuing diplomatic relations, or will they feel that, with the foreign troops practically at their doors, they will receive no mercy from the advancing armies, and 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 impertinence 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 officers 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 awful sounds accompanying such attacks still ringing our ears! The shrill cries of “Sha! sha! sha!” (Kill! kill! kill!) and the constant blowing of trumpets, is enough to account for our continued nightmares. While awake the brain can be somewhat 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 something 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 downpour 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 polite and 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 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 diplomats 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 spendthrifts 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 have them, or had they fallen into the hands of our relief?^[1]

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 still, 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,^[2] 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 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 Macdonald 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. Owing to the half-armistice existing, the early afternoon hours were fairly safe ones in which to move about 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 all 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 messengers have gone out and come in, and it is the route Mr. Squiers urged in his letter on both M^cCalla and Chaffee as being the only way by which troops could penetrate right into the heart of our lines 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 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 embraced him. The Sikh was dumbfounded 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 Chevalier 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 bird’s-eye view of it all, 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 alive,” 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 crying because we were alive! A short time before meeting us, on his line of march, he saw poor Père 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 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 Infantry, belonging to us, and General Chaffee, well set-up marines under Colonel Waller—they came on and on, stumbling through the hot August sunlight, line after line, without end, and we were nonplussed when they told us they were but a 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 incoming 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 Forbidden 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 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 lines, 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! First to come to me was Colonel Churchill, the British Military Attaché to Japan, who got permission in Tokyo to come up with the Japanese troops to Peking. On finding me alive and well, he returned to the Japanese headquarters in time to send word with the first official telegram 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 Attaché to Japan, that I was safe and well. 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! To know that my dear sister in Japan and my family at home have been relieved from the uncertainty of my condition, already causes my heartstrings 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 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 reconnaissances; and that by early noon the main body of the allies 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 our siege mess dined together on our little eight-sided Chinese table, which was generously stocked with the remaining tins which we had been hoarding for such a long time. Somebody has said, “There is a sadness about the last time of everything,” and truly it was so with us. I felt exactly as children feel when they have been having a wild 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.”

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 personification 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 buried with Reilly.” This man, whether addressing 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.

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 off 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 complimentary criticisms of things American during the siege. One was that the services of Herbert Squiers had been simply invaluable during the most trying part 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 extraordinary, and their ability 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 instances which could be cited this was proved.

The British have never been known unnecessarily to sing the praises of other nationalities, and I was very happy to have this judge of things military 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 to Tien-tsin on Monday, the 20th. A boat-load of convalescents and several boat-loads of missionaries will make up the convoy. Fargo Squiers, my maid, and I, will have our own little 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 little 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 was the one thing we had had no use 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 perturbation, he unloaded what he thought was only a proper equivalent for the two dollars which he had asked of me—an exquisite gold-mounted cloisonné 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 wriggling 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 without 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 little kiddies, who, thank Heaven! are all still alive, but very much run down from the siege.

This morning Baron von Rahden came for breakfast, 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 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 handsome 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 themselves in the wells of their courtyards. The men who are throughout Peking now looting, constantly run into these silent testimonials, showing 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 legalized way. They say that 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, surrounded by a whole page of wicked, leering horrors.