The Ming Tombs.

Manawatu Herald, 29 November 1900, Page 3

The Ming Tombs.

•• - •■ - The Ming Tombs, of which the Sikhs are accused by the French of Ransacking, number 13, and lie in a sort of amphitheatre of the hills, thirty miles north of Pekin. It is usuaf to approach them in characteristic Chinese fashion from the rear, so that the traveller may reserve the great avenue, with its stone images, to the last. A space about 200 yards square Is walled in with plain read brick. Within the enclosure are a number of little pavilions, nestling deep in dark groves of cedar trees. They centre * round a long low temple — •' yellow tiled with red lacquered columns, latticed panels, and bracketed caves " — which stands upon a broad marble terrace within a white marble balustrade, exquisitely carved in relief, with dragons and arabesques. This is the shrine of Yanglo, the greatest of the Mings ; and within is his memorial tablet of plain red lacquer, bearing the posthumous title of this fifteenth century " Grand Monarque." Through the gloom can be dimly traced the outline of the huge polished teak columns 32 feet high, and 12 feet round— who can say how they came there ? Behind on the edge of the hills, rises a square tower of brick and granite, topped by an oeblisk pointing towards the hidden tomb. But, like the Pharaohs at TbeJbes and the Persian kings at Per^JM^lis, the Mings concealed the exacOroot wh«e they were laid to rest, and none of the tourists who have scribbled their names on the tablets in Unas " red walled, yellow .tiled,

marble bordered halls " have yet hac the satisfaction of handling the bonei , of the dead kings. _ I The great avenue, with its colossa " | statues of men and beasts —many o j ! them 15 feet high, cut from solid block: ; j of stone—guard the approach to' the [ ! tombs, almost as when the temple o ; Yanglo was built six centuries ago ' The first duty ot the European Powers ' seems to be just now to punish China ' j but all lovers of picturesque antiquitj J will hope that China can be sufficient!) impressed with the gravity of hei crimes without the destruction of the Shih-sang-ling,—Christchurch Press. I !