October 19, 1917 The days are clear and dry and the weather bracing but not cold, even at night, only comfortable. At 10am, we started from the Wagon-Lits Hotel with a Cook's guide in rickshaws for the Forbidden City. First, we went to the Winter Palace, which is open by special pass to visitors. Here Yuan Shi-hai held his court recently. The way led along wide streets, 60 feet wide, which are now the rule in Peking. The Winter Palace is situated on a high hill in the Tartar City, just on the borders of the Forbidden City and a few hundred yards from Coal Hill, a higher hill topped by a Temple and reserved for the use of the Emperors. The Winter Palace is reached by a series of marble stairways up the steep hill through the temples. At the top, a large pagoda with a golden dome stands dominant. At the base of the hill is a vast pond or a lake covered by lotus lilies and spreads practically about the hill and is crossed by marble bridges of several spans in two places. From the summit of the hill at the Pagoda base, Peking spreads out in all directions, but the traveler is bewildered to find that only a vast forest of trees is spread out before him with an occasional Pagoda or gate looming up amid the green. Peking is virtually hidden by its trees, which are features of all its compounds, and as it is a city of magnificent distances, the trees dominate. The forest trees on the hill were chiefly juniper, with yellow pine a peculiar variety white barked pine, ash (acacia) trees and willows about all the lakes and streams.