The palaces in question were joined by a magnificent
bridge on the high-road between Hien-yang and Si-ngan. This very
year a German firm has contracted to build an iron bridge over the
Yellow River at Lan-thou Fu, where crossed by Major Bruce.
CHAPTER XXII
CITIES AND TOWNS
There are singularly few descriptions of cities in ancient Chinese
history, but here again we may safely assume that most of them
were in principle, if only on a small scale, very much what they
are now, mere inartistic, badly built collections of hovels. Soul,
the quaint capital of Corea, as it appeared in its virgin
condition to its European discoverers twenty-five years ago,
probably then closely resembled an ancient vassal Chinese prince's
capital of the very best kind. Modern trade is responsible for the
wealthy commercial streets now to be found in all large Chinese
cities; but a small _hien_ city in the interior--and it must
be remembered that a _hien_ circuit or district corresponds
to an old marquisate or feudal principality of the vassal unit
type--is often a poor, dusty, dirty, depressing, ramshackle
agglomeration of villages or hamlets, surrounded by a disproportionately
pretentious wall, the cubic contents of which wall alone would more
than suffice to build in superior style the whole mud city within; for half
the area of the interior is apt to be waste land or stagnant puddles: it
was so even in Peking forty years ago, and possibly is so still except
in the "Legation quarter.
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