By arrangement with Mr. Normann we publish to-day another of his communications to the Pall Mall Gazette and the other journals represented by him.

Peking, 25th November 1888

To learn what the Chinaman really thinks about the foreigner you must come to Peking: no other city in China will serve. And the discovery will be far from flattering to your national pride.

Peking is the first place I have ever visited where the mere fact of being a foreigner, a stranger in speech, dress, and manners, did not of itself secure one a certain amount of consideration or at any rate make one the object of useful interest. Here the precise opposite is the case. The "foreign devil" is despised at sight - not merely hated, but regarded with sincere and profound contempt. "If the Tsung-li Yamen were abolished" said a Peking diplomat to me "our lives would not be safe here for twenty-four hours. The people just refrain from actually molesting because they have learned that they will be very severely punished if they do." At home we cherish the belief that we are welcome in China, that the Chinese are pleased to learn of our Western civilization, that they are gradually and gladly assimilating our habits and views, and that the wall of prejudice is gradually breaking down. It would hardly be possible to be more grossly and painfully mistaken. The people to a man detest and despise us (I am speaking, of course, of the real Chinese, not of the anglicized Chinese of HongKong and elsewhere, who are but a drop in the ocean of Celestial humanity) and as for the rulers, it will not be far from the truth to say that, the better they know us, the less they like us.

Let us say that you start out in the morning for a prowl in Peking. What are your relations with the people you meet? First of all, of course, they crowd round you whenever you stop and in a minute you are at the centre of a mass of solid humanity, which is eating horrible stuff, which is covered with vermin, which smells worse than words, and which is quite likely to have a small-pox about it. As for taking a photograph in the streets, it is out of the question. The only way I could manage this was to place my camera on the edge of a bridge, where they could not get in front of the lens, and then I was in imminent danger of being pushed into the canal, as the bridges have no rail or parapet. The crowd jostles you, feels of your clothes with its dirty hands, pokes its nose in your face, keeping up all the time (I was generally with a friend who understood Chinese) a string of insulting and obscene remarks, with accompanying roars of laughter. By and by the novelty and fun of this wears off and you get first impatient and then savage. But beware above all things of striking or even laying a finger on one of these dirty wretches. That would be probably a fatal mistake. They will do nothing but talk and push, but if you should hit one of them you would be more than likely not to get away alive or at least without bad injuries. But suppose that you walk steadily and imperturbably on? The pedestrian you meet treats you with much less consideration than one of his own countrymen; the childen run to the door to cry "?????" - "devil" at you; they have other indescribable and worse ways of insulting you; and a few weeks ago when a member of the British Legation was riding underneath the wall a brick was dropped upon him from the top. It just missed his head and struck the horse behind the saddle, fatally injuring it, I believe. The Chinese children, again, have an original way of amusing themselves at the expense of the foreign devils. A child will provide itself with a big fire-cracker and then sit patiently at the door till he sees you in the distance coming along on your pony. Then he will run out, drop the cracker in the road, light the slow match with a fire-stick and retire to a safe place to watch events. With devilish precocity he generally manages to cause it to explode just under your pony's nose, and if you are lucky enough to keep your seat and pull up a mile or so in the direction you don't want to go, he doubtless considers that his experiment has only been a moderate success. If you should break your neck and be left there dead in the road, that would confer imperishable lustre upon his family and neighborhood. When this has happened to you once or twice, you learn to jog about the Celestial city with short reins and your knees stuck well into your saddle, ready for developments at any moment. I am told, too, that Lady Walsham's chair was actually stopped in the open street a short time ago and she herself grossly insulted, that a member of our Consular service was nearly killed outside the Llama temple, and that there are few foreigners who have not had some unpleasant experience or other. No doubt it is sometimes the foreigners' own fault, but our dear old friend Chesson himself would have failed to get on smoothly at all times.

This is certainly a most extraordinary people, and next to nothing of them is known at home. Here for instance are a few stories that I have picked up. A foreign resident of Peking who speaks Chinese well was riding along the other day and came to and excited crowd. Drawing near he discovered a circle of people quietly watching a man desperately trying to commit suicide by dashing his head against a wall. He dismounted, restrained the man, and learned that this was a coolie who claimed that his payment for a certain porter's job was short by ten cash - less than a penny - and as the employer refused to pay more, he was proceeding to take revenge by killing himself on the spot, knowing that by doing so he would get the other into considerable trouble. On another occasion a man threw himself into the canal, but was dragged out. So he simple sat down on the edge and starved himself to death, to be revenged against somebody who had cheated him. Again, one day a man was found murdered on a bridge near the British Legation. The law of China prescribes that a murdered body must not be removed till the murderer is caught. Therefore it was covered with a mat and left. Days passed and a month and still the rotting body lay there, till at last the Minister, who had to pass it every day, vigorously protestd and it was taken off the bridge and placed a little further away. And a Chinese newspaper is responsible for this story, which indeed has nothing whatever incredible about it. One day a sow belonging to a Mrs. Feng happening to knock down and slightly injure the front door of a Mrs. Wang, the latter at once proceeded to claim damages, which was refused. Thereupon a fierce altercation ensued, which terminated in Mrs. Wang's threatening to take her own life. Mrs. Feng, upon hearing of this direful threat, resolved at once to take time by the forelock, and steal a march upon her enemy by taking her own life and thus turn the tables upon her. The accorfriend [?] with whom I rode a good deal in Peking told me that the other day, hearing screams of laughter from his stable, he went to investigate. There he discovered that his groom and "boy" had caught a big rat, nailed its front paws to a board, soaked it in kerosine, set fire to it and were enjoying the spectacle. But this is not so bad as one of the tricks of the professional kidnapper, who will catch a child in the street, carry it off to another town, blind it and then sell it for a professional beggar. But I shall have something much worse in the way of Chinese horrors to tell on another occasion.

I said in my last letter that the sights of Peking are not nearly so accessible to foreigners today as they were five years ago. And it is the testimony of most of the foreign residents that their treatment by the Chinese grows worse each year. The closing of the top of the wall to pedestrians is the last act of petty unpleasantness. There seems to be no reason whatever for this, except to deprive the foreigners of their only decent walk. Another example is that the Marchioness Tseng, when first she returned from Europe, used to have an afternoon "at home" once a week, like European ladies. This gave, however, such deep offense in all Chinese quarters that she was compelled to cease. A Chinese lady, again, who had been in Europe, called upon two European ladies who were visiting - I forget whether Peking or Tientsin. Next day, desiring to be polite, they returned her call. Immediately afterwards they received a message from her begging them never to come to her house again. So, too, if you begin to study Chinese with a teacher in Peking and you happen to meet him in the street, do not expect the least sign of recognition. He will cut you dead, and then come next morning to apologize and explain that it would be very unpleasant for his family if he were seen bowing to a foreigner. He will teach you and take your dollars: he will not greet you. And the Abbe Favier, the finest specimen of a priest I have ever met, a beau sabreur of the church, who wears Chinese dress and his hair in a queue, who speaks Chinese perfectly, who has even been decorated with a sapphire button by the Emperor, told me that he had just received the most remarkable honour and recognition of his whole life in China. He met the governor of the city in his official chair, and the great man positively bowed to him, to the stupefaction of the lookers on. "Il m'a salue, Monsieur - comme ca!" And while I have been here, H.R.H. Prince Henry of Bourbon (Comte de Bardi) desired very much to see the temple of Heaven, which has been closed to foreigners for several years. Accordingly the German Minister (he travels, of course, with an Austrian passport) applied to the Tsung-Li Yamen for special permission for his distinguished guest. After some delay it was granted, as some say only after the Marquis Tseng had carried the request to the Empress herself, and an appointment was made. The Prince and his party, accompanied by the Secretary of German Legation, rode out to the gates of the Temple and only succeeded in passing the outer one after long discussion and altercation. The next gate was still more difficult and after an hour's parley the Keepers agreed to allow the men of the party in, if the Princess would go back into the street and wait for them. This was too much, and the whole party naturally left in indignation. The German Minister sent a formal and vigorous complaint to the Tsung-li Yamen, and after a while he received a sort of apology and expression of regret at the misunderstanding. But the exclusion was undoubtedly deliberate and according to orders received. The Ministers could not well meet the request with a flat refusal, but they took care that the permission should have no value.

My own principal experience of Celestial sight-seeing I am not likely to forget and should be very unwilling to repeat. Among the places of interest in Peking, the Yung Ho Kung, the Great Llamaserai or Llama Temple ranks very high. It is a monastery of Mongol Buddhism or Shamanism, and contains over 1,000 Mongol and Tibetan monks ruled over by a "Living Buddha". No foreigner, however, has been in it for several years, as the inmates are a rough and lawless lot, practically beyond the control of the Chinese authorities, and the last party that entered it was rudely handled. It is regarded as all to more sacred, too, because an Emperor was born in one of its temples before they were given to the Llamas. When I spoke of going there both my mafoo (groom) and "boy" told me that strangers could no longer get in, the former adding that he had accompanied different employers there six times without success. A friend in Peking, however, told me that one of the priests, called the Pai Llama, whatever that may mean, had come to him a few weeks before to borrow five dollars, and had said as an inducement that if he or any of his friends wanted to see the Llamaserai he would take them over it himself without a fee. So my friend gave me his big red Chinese card with the Pai Llama's name on it as an introduction and I got Mr. Werner from the British Legation, who speaks Chinese (a brother, by the way, of Miss Alice Werner, who wrote "Bannerman of the Dandenong") to go with me, as he was equally anxious to see the place. It is on the outskirts of Peking, nearly an hour's ride from Legation Street and we passed through two or three gates from the street without any difficulty. Then some boy - neophytes or acolytes - we knew them from their shaven heads - ran ahead of us and warned the priests, who shut the doors. After a quarter of an hour's colloquy we bribed the door-keeper to tell the Pai-Llama, and by and by the latter appeared, a small dirty individual, who succeeded with much difficulty in persuading the others to open the gates and let us step just inside - Mr. Werner, myself, and my "boy". Then he immediately disappeared and we saw him no more. After another half hour of bargaining we agreed to pay them a certain moderate sum to show us the four chief sights of the Temple. The first of these was the great Buddha, a wooden image, 70 feet high, richly ornamented and clothed, holding an enormous lotus in each hand and with the traditional jewel on his breast. In each section of his huge gold crown sat a small Budddha, as perfect and as ornamented as the great one. His toe measured 21 inches. On each side of him hung a huge scroll 75 feet long, bearing Chinese characters, and a series of galleries, reached by several flights of stairs, surrounded him. The expression of his great bronze face was singularly lofty and I was seized with a great desire to photograph him. The crowd of monks was outside the locked door, one only entering with us, so I hinted to him that if he permitted me to take a photograph a dollar might be forthcoming. The dollar interested him, but he had no idea what a photograph was. After a while Mr. Werner succeeded in explaining what the Chinese call the "shadowpicture" and then he would not hear of it, declaring that the whole temple would instantly fall down if such a thing were attempted. I offered two dollars, three, four, five, ten, and then, my eagerness increasing with the difficulty, twenty. At last he said that for twenty dollars he would agree to smuggle me in next morning to do it, as, if any of the other priests knew, there would be trouble. So we passed on to the other sights - two magnificent bronze lions and a wonderful bronze urn; many temples filled with strange idols, hung with thousands of silk hangings and laid with Thibetan carpets; all sorts of bronze and enamel altar utensils, presented by different Emperors, among them two elephants in email cloisonne, said to be the best specimens of such work in China; and the great hall, with its prayer benches for all the monks, where they worship every afternoon at five. In a couple of hours we had seen everything and came out again into the central courtyard. Here were already a hundred or more monks waiting for us, all with their heads shaven like billiard-balls and on the whole a set of as through-paced blackguards as ever I set eyes on; filthy, vermin-covered, bloated, scrofulous, and with the marks of nameless vices stamped clearly on many of their faces. "I shall be glad when we are out of this", I remarked, and my companion heartily assented. But easier said than done. They crowded round us with brutal inquisitiveness, pulled us about, shouted to us and laughed grossly as half-rational gorillas might do. Werner said to them that we were very much pleased with our visit, and we slowly edged towards the door. But there seemed to be a sort of half-developed conspiracy to crowd us in another direction. They did not actually oppose us but somehow we could not get there. It was as though they did not like to let us get away, yet were conscious that they had no excuse for detaining us. After a quarter of an hour of this we began to get "riled". Just then we all came to a sort of tunnel gate in a wall, leading from one court to another, Werner and one crowd first, I and another crowd afterwards, and my "boy" and a third crowd last. As I was passing, a man I took from his dress to be a sort of door-keeper sprang out and addressed me volubly. Not understanding him I took no notice, when he grasped my arm to detain me. I shook him off and was passing on when suddenly he seized me by the collar with both hands and flung me violently back against the wall. At such a moment one does not reflect upon consequences and I did what anybody else would have done. The moment his grasp quitted my collar I struck him between the eyes. He recovered himself, and the misunderstanding was about to be prolonged vigorously on both sides when a very old priest in a fine yellow robe emerged from a doorway and began to play the peacemaker with many smiles, holding us each by the hand. A minute's reflection showed me the extreme folly of getting into a row in such a place. So I responded effusively to the venerable Llama's overtures, and calling my "boy" - Werner was at some distance - bade him explain that if the gentleman had anything to say to us we should be glad to hear it, but that if he laid a finger on us he would get into trouble. As we were two and they were upwards of two hundred by this time, I have wondered since that the ludicrous side of this did not strike them. However, as I followed up the remark with a few small coins, nobody care to impugn my logic and I started after Werner.

As soon as I overtook him, however, I saw from the movement of the crowd that something was wrong, and when I forced my way into the middle it was evidently a much more serious affair than mine. A young brute of a monk had approached Werner from behind and suddenly handed to him "a rousing kick". Werner, naturally enough, had spun around in time to catch him with a good cut across the face with his riding-whip and stood in this moment in a fine attitude of pale anger, grasping his whip in a very workmanlike way and in fluent Chinese evidently consigning the whole pack of them to the ultimate destination of bad Llamas, wherever that may be. The monk, on the other hand, was foaming with rage and rapidly stripping off all his upper clothing with the most unmistakeable intention of "going for" Werner. Already he was nearly half-naked and although perhaps a trifle fat, still an ugly customer to handle. "He struck me with his whip" he exclaimed, pointing to the mark on his face, and then followed a string of remarks leveled at us. "What does he say?" I asked. "Oh, curse him" replied my erudite companion with a fine scorn of consequences. "He says we shan't get out alive." Just then a monk shouted something which the others eagerly echoed, and a dozen of them instantly ran and shut the great gates of the courtyard.

The sight of Werner's anger had completed the cooling process in me, and by this time I was altogether too cool for comfort. If I had not been so, however, I mightn't have been spinning this yarn for there was no doubt whatever about it, we were in a very tight place. We were in the centre of probably the most dangerous place in Peking, on the outskirts of the city, a quarter of a mile from the street, with half a dozen closed gates between us and it, and completely at the mercy of two hundred savage Mongols and Thibetans, who had vowed to have our lives. There were a thousand of them within call, they acknowledge no Chinese authority whatever, the Chinese government would be extremely loath to interfere with them for fear of provoking trouble in Thibet, and if they just knocked us on the head and hid our bodies in one of their Temple dens, we should very probably never have been heard of again. The situation was most unpleasant. One thing was quite clear, namely that it was worse than useless to attempt anything by force. So I stepped in between Werner and his assailant, folded my arms and stood perfectly still, begging the former in a low voice to keep cool and do the same, as probably both our lives depended upon it. Clearly the only thing to do was to get out of the place at any cost. Then I called my "boy" who was yelling and struggling to keep possession of my two cameras. He promptly relinquished them to the enemy and came. I told him that if he didn't stop jabbering I would knock his head off and then I got him to quietly ask the best-looking of the monks for how much they would consent to let us go out. All this took but a half a minute to do and as soon as the crowd heard the question, the pugilistic gentleman was squelched by common consent. "Fifty dollars", was the conclusion arrived at after ten minutes discussion. "Tell them we have not so much money with us, but they can come and get it from my home tomorrow morning." But they were much to wary to fall into such a palpable trap. So the argument continued, while Werner and I discussed the situation. "I have my revolver under my hand" I said "if the worst comes." "For God's sake don'e let them see it" he replied "it would be certainly all up with us then." To bring the story to an end, however, at last my "boy" made a bargain with them and we were fleeced of several dollars at each gate that they could manage to lead us through, before we got back to the street and our horses. I got a photograph, too, after all, for just before the last gate thare was a wonderfully pretty pavilion with a great bronze lion before it. So I took my Scovill camera from the "boy" and snapped it at the pavilion when I thought the crowd were no watching me. Three or four of them, however, caught sight of me and made one jump for me and the camera. I managed to keep my feet and a big kick only just touched the camera, breaking one of the supports of the shutter. The picture is not exactly what photographers call "plucky" and it might be a good deal sharper, but it will serve as a souvenir of a peculiarly bad quarter of an hour. I got through the gate all right and my "boy" was following when half a dozen of the scoundrels precipitated themselves on him and sent him flying head first into the middle of the street, while my other camera, tripod and bag of double-backs landed each in a separate mud hole.

That afternoon as I was mending my detective camera my "boy" came in with the tea. "Master" "Well?" "I no go Llama Temple any more - belong velly bad man!" "You'll certainly never go there again with me." And I did not keep my appointment next morning to photograph the big Buddha furtively. Henry Normann

Ed. note - This account appears as the only English text in a large handwritten German journal - see photos below. It falls in the pages dated Friday March 29 1889. This large (8x10-inch, 796-page) black-leather-bound, gold-stamped (and a.e.g.) volume has lost its spine but is otherwise in good condition. It is on a slightly age-darkened water-marked paper, and is either a hand-written original copy, or some sort of lithograph copy. I incline to the latter, as there are two printed pages at the front. The title is: Durch / dreihundertssechzig / Langen=Grade / Tagebuchblatter / von / Henry T. Bottinger on the cover, while on the title page appears: Durch / "360 Langen=Grade" / (Rund d'rum 'Rum.) / Tagebuchblatter / Uber meine Reise um die Welt / 11. Dezember 1888 bis 1 Juni 1889 / von Henry T. Bottinger. It is autographed to a "friend and colleague" with the date 9 Aug.1891.

I take the title to mean something like "Through 360 degrees of longitude / Diary" - that is, a journal kept on a trip around the world. There are little drawings in the text, and two full-page maps (of the Niagara Falls area).

The most peculiar thing about this text is the repeated use, quite clear in the script of the original text, of the word Llama for a Buddhist holy man or priest.

Anyone who has read this classic of 19-century British "public school" life will find this d/w art rather peculiar - just who was it aimed at?

Small Town Murder by Beatrice Jefferson was written by a Big City girl. I found this signed copy in a thrift store on the edge of the Atlanta megapolis.