Rust and dirt are everywhere, and the 100 workmen for whom pay is drawn never number on the rare pay days more than sixty persons, a phenomenon observed in most establishments in China worked by government.

Yet with a foreigner in charge excellent work could be turned out from the factory.

The buildings are spacious, the grounds are ample.
The powder factory is outside the city, near the north-eastern angle of the wall, but the powder magazine is on some rising ground inside the city.

No guns are stationed anywhere on the walls, though they may be in concealment in the turrets; but near the small west gate I saw some small cannon of ancient casting, built on the model of the guns cast by the Jesuit missionaries in China two centuries ago, if they were not the actual originals.

They were all marked in relief with a cross and the device I.H.S .-- a motto that you would think none but a Chinaman could select for a weapon designed to destroy men, yet characteristic of this country of contradictions.