Description
Antique print dated 1895.
The page is over 115 years old and in good condition.
In order to enhance and protect the page we have set in within a bespoke frame and mount.
Frame size 400mm x 370mm. available also in a
gold frame, your choice. RtW.183.
Entitled – Pekin. The Great Wall.
Below the picture an inscription reads:
Pekin. – Strange sights meet the eye at every turn.
Approaching the city from the north, the walls are more than 60ft. high, and are over-topped by lofty buildings.
In winter traveller flounders along knee-deep in mud, while during the summer season a perfect Australian-like and blinding dust-storm is raised at every step.
The walls are very high and winding, having a raised road in the middle on which two carts can easily drive abreast; on either side of this road is a lower one about the same breadth, lined with squalid-looking, one-storied houses, and well-arranged shops with painted signs and streaming pennants.
The greatest trade is carried on in the South City, which is traversed from north to south by a few broad streets, whose enormous width makes the well-carved and wooden-fronted houses look mean and small.
Here are seen barbers, cobblers, and blacksmiths plying their avocations in the open air.
There are stalls covered with tea, fruits, and cooked rice; and the crowded streets are half blocked with soldiers, policemen, Tartar officers, mandarins of all ranks wearing different coloured buttons, camels laden with coal, sedan chairs, and wind wheelbarrows, which are propelled by means of sails.
The Great Wall of China, part of which is shown in our picture, is some distance from Pekin, and the road to it is paved with solid granite slabs 10ft. long.
The portion of the Wall visited by travellers is a loop-wall of later formation than the Great Wall itself, which was commenced about 214 B.C.
Commencing at the Shan Hai Pass, and designed to check the incursions of various predatory tribes, this monster line of defence is nearly 2,000 miles in actual length, and still, to some extent, defines the northern frontier of China Proper.
If you buy an item and then see it relisted this is because we occasionally have more than one available, each page is
original and not a photocopy.
Thank you for looking, please visit our shop.
