"
If this telegram does not gratify the editor of my newspaper, well--
Two hours to visit Sou-Tcheou, that is not much.
In Turkestan we have seen two towns side by side, an ancient one and a
modern one. Here, in China, as Pan-Chao points out, we have two and
even three or four, as at Pekin, enclosed one within the other.
Here Tai-Tchen is the outer town, and Le-Tchen the inner one. It
strikes us at first glance that both look desolate. Everywhere are
traces of fire, here and there pagodas or houses half destroyed, a mass
of ruins, not the work of time, but the work of war. This shows that
Sou-Tcheou, taken by the Mussulmans and retaken by the Chinese, has
undergone the horrors of those barbarous contests which end in the
destruction of buildings and the massacre of their inhabitants of every
age and sex.
It is true that population rapidly increases in the Celestial Empire;
more rapidly than monuments are raised from their ruins. And so
Sou-Tcheou has become populous again within its double wall as in the
suburbs around. Trade is flourishing, and as we walked through the
principal streets we noticed the well-stocked shops, to say nothing of
the perambulating pedlars.
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