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There was plenty of time apart from these formal occasions to look around Jehol. Macartney is full of admiration for the parks and countryside. He describes the West Park in the following words:
It is one of the finest forest scenes in the world, wild, woody, mountainous and rocky, abounding with stags and deer of different species, and most of the other beasts of chase not dangerous to man. In many places immense woods, chiefly oaks, pines and chestnuts grow upon perpendicular steeps and force their sturdy roots through every resistance of surface, and of soil, where vegetation would seem almost impossible. These woods often clamber over the loftiest pinnacles of the stony hills, or gathering on the skirts of them, descend with a rapid sweep, and bury themselves in the deepest valleys. There, at proper distances, you find palaces, banqueting houses and monasteries (but without bonzes) adapted to the situation and peculiar circumstances of the place, sometimes with a rivulet on one hand gently stealing through the glade, at others with a cataract rumbling from above, raging with foam, and rebounding with a thousand echoes from below or silently engulfed in a gloomy pool or yawning chasm. The roads by which we approached these romantic scenes are often hewn out of the living rock, and conducted round the hills in a kind of rugged staircase and yet no accident occurred in our progress, not a false step disturbed the regularity of our cavalcade, though the horses are spirited, and all of them unshod.
Although Lord Macartney was unable to establish a close rapport with the first Minister who accompanied them, the journal, nevertheless paints a picture of them having an enjoyable and interesting time, in contrast to the usual descriptions of the visit which concentrate on the refusal to perform the kowtow and instead to go down on bended knee, an alternative which, after some discussion, was accepted amicably when it was agreed that it was sufficient to go down on one knee, but not to kiss hands.
Finally the Embassy party left for 'Pekin' on 20th September and arrived on the 26th after an arduous journey, Macartney himself being