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National Geographic : 1920 Nov
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE Photograph by J. A . Muller THEl SUMMER PALACE, ON TIHE SLOPE OF THIE MOUNTAIN OF TEN THOUSAND ANCIENTS "The stately pleasure dome of the poet's imaginings, with its graceful, spiry, triple-roofed pavilion set upon a massive four-square base of stone, towering above porticos and pailous, summer-houses, grottos, islands, lily ponds, and bridges of marble" (see text below). and red-brown, deepening into twilight purple. My host knew well the charm of the hills; so when, in my first rash judgment on the city, I hinted that I found it dusty and sprawling and not as I expected, he took me off to the hills. That was be fore I had seen the blue peace of the Temple of Heaven, or the yellow splen dor of the Forbidden City, or the many hues and the agility of the rampant dragons; for he knew that, to understand Peking and to love it, one must feel its glory in the setting of the hills, not see it through the critical dust of the streeted plain. So on the morning after my arrival we put ourselves into two rickshaws and our quilts and blankets into a third, for every provident traveler in China. carries his bed with him, and away we went, three and a half miles, at a dog trot, to the western gate, thence seven more over the willow-shaded highway to the Mountain of Ten Thousand Ancients, a pleasant wooded hillock, deep green against the bare brown of the January hills. Before it lies a broad lake and on its slope stands the far-famed Summer Pal ace. Though several centuries more re cent than Kublai Khan, this is indeed the stately pleasure dome of the poet's imaginings. Kublai might well have de creed it, with its graceful, spiry, triple roofed pavilion set upon a massive four square base of" stone, towering above porticos and pailous, kiosks and summer houses, grottos and labyrinthine passages, islands and lily ponds, bridges of marble, and grotesque dragons cast in bronze. There was ice three feet thick on the lake where lotus flowers bloom in sum mer; but the sun shone gloriously, illum ining golden roofs and deepening the foliage of pine and cedar, and on the hill top behind and above the palace shone a temple all of glazed tile, mottled green and yellow, glowing like a jeweled crown. The wintry weather, coupled with the one-dollar admission fee, gave us the whole vast inclosure to ourselves. Here I had my first opportunity in China to eat my lunch in the open unsurrounded by a concourse of the curious! . :)0
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