strong town in Flanders, or to fight a disciplined army; one good line of German cuirassiers, or of French cavalry, might withstand all the horse of China; a million of their foot could not stand before one embattled body of our infantry, posted so as not to be surrounded, though they were not to be one to twenty in number; nay, I do not boast if I say that thirty thousand German or English foot, and ten thousand horse, well managed, could defeat all the forces of China; and so of our fortified towns, and of the art of our engineers in assaulting and defending towns; there is not a fortified town in China could hold out one month against the batteries and attacks of a European army; and, at the same time, all the armies of China could never take such a town as Dunkirk, provided it was not starved; no, not in a ten years' siege. They have fire-arms, it is true; but they are awkward and uncertain in their going off, and their powder has but little strength. Their armies are badly disciplined, and want skill to attack, or temper to retreat; and, therefore, I must confess, it seemed strange to me, when I came home, and heard our people say such fine things of the power, glory, magnificence, and trade of the Chinese; because, as far as I saw, they appeared to be a contemptible herd or crowd of ignorant, sordid slaves, subjected to a government qualified only to rule such a people; and were not its distance inconceivably great from Muscovy, and the Muscovite empire in a manner as rude, impotent, and ill-governed as they, the Czar of Muscovy might with ease drive them all out of their country, and conquer them in one campaign; and had the czar (who is now a growing prince) fallen this way, instead of attacking the warlike Swedes, and equally improved himself in the art of war, as they say he has done, and if none of the powers of Europe had envied or interrupted him, he might by this time have been emperor of China, instead of being beaten by the king of Sweden at Narva, when the latter was not one to six in number. As their strength and their grandeur, so their navigation, commerce, and husbandry, is very imperfect, compared to the same things in Europe: also in their knowledge, their learning, and in their skill in the sci

ences, they are either very awkward or defective, though they have globes and spheres, and a smattering of the mathematics, and think they know more than all the world besides; but they know little of the motions of the heavenly bodies: and so grossly and absurdly ignorant are their common people, that when the sun is eclipsed, they think a great dragon has assaulted it, and is going to run away with it; and they fall a clattering with all the drums and kettles in the country, to fright the monster away, just as we do to hive a swarm of bees.

As this is the only excursion of the kind which I have made in all the accounts I have given of my travels, so I shall make no more such; it is none of my business, nor any part of my design, but to give an account of my own adventures through a life of inimitable wanderings, and a long variety of changes, which, perhaps, few that come after me will have heard the like of: I shall therefore say very little of all the mighty places, desert countries, and numerous people I have yet to pass through, more than relates to my own story, and which my concern among them will make necessary.

I was now, as near as I can compute, in the heart of China, about thirty degrees north of the line-for we were returned from Nanquin-I had, indeed, a mind to see the city of Pekin, which I had heard so much of, and Father Simon importuned me daily to do it. At length his time of going away being set, and the other missionary who was to go with him being arrived from Macao, it was necessary that we should resolve either to go or not; so I referred it wholly to my partner, and left it wholly to his choice, who at length resolved it in the affirmative, and we prepared for our journey.-We set out with very good advantage, as to finding the way, for we got leave to travel in the retinue of one of their mandarins, a kind of viceroy or prin cipal magistrate in the province where they reside, and who take great state upon them, travelling with great attendance, and with great homage from the people, who are sometimes greatly impoverished by them, being obliged to furnish provislons for them and all their attendants in their journeys. Tha. which I particularly observed, as to our travelling with his bag

gage, was tnis, that though we received sufficient provisions both for ourselves and our horses from the country, as belongang to the mandarin, yet we were obliged to pay for every thing we had, after the market price of the country, and the mandarin's steward collected it duly from us; so that our travelling in the retinue of the mandarin, though it was a very great kindness to us, was not such a mighty favor in him, but was a great advantage to him, considering there were above thirty other people travelled in the same manner besides us, under the protection of his retinue; for the country furnished all the provisions for nothing to him, and yet he took our money for them.

We were twenty-five days travelling to Pekin, through a country infinitely populous, but I think badly cultivated; the husbandry, the economy, and the way of living miserable, though they boast so much of the industry of the people; Í say miserable, if compared with our own, but not so to these poor wretches, who know no other. The pride of the people is infinitely great, and exceeded by nothing but their poverty, in some parts, which adds to that which I call their misery; and I must needs think the naked savages of America live much more happy than the poorer sort of these, because as they have nothing, so they desire nothing; whereas these are proud and insolent, and in the main are in many parts mere beggars and drudges; their ostentation is inexpressible; and, if they can, they love to keep multitudes of servants or slaves, which is to the last degree ridiculous, as well as the contempt of all the world but themselves.

I must confess, I travelled more pleasantly afterwards in the deserts and vast wildernesses of Grand Tartary than here; and yet the roads here are well paved and well kept, and very convenient for travellers; but nothing was more awkward to me than to see such a haughty, imperious, insolent people in the midst of the grossest simplicity and ignorance; and my friend Father Simon and I used to be very merry upon these occasions, to see the beggarly pride of these people; for example, coming by the house of a country gentleman, as Father

Simon called him, about ten leagues off the city of Nanquin, we had first of all the honor to ride with the master of the house about two miles; the stite he rode in was a perfect Don Quixotism, being a mixture of pomp and poverty. His habit was very proper for a scaramouch, or merry-andrew, being a dirty calico, with hanging-sleeves, tassels, and cuts and slashes almost on every side; it covered a taffety vest, as greasy as a butcher's, and which testified that his honor must be a most exquisite sloven. His horse was but a poor, starved, hobbling creature, and he had two slaves followed him on foot to drive the poor creature along; he had a whip in his hand, and he belabored the beast as fast about the head as his slaves did about the tail; and thus he rode by us, with about ten or twelve servants, going from the city to his country-seat, about half a league before us. We travelled on gently, but this figure of a gentleman rode away before us, and as we stopped at a village about an hour to refresh us, when we came by the country-seat of this great man, we saw him in a little place before his door, eating his repast. It was a kind of a garden, but he was easy to be seen; and we were given to understand that the more we looked at him, the better he would be pleased. He sat under a tree, something like the palmetto, which effectually shaded him over the head, and on the south side; but under the tree was also placed a large umbrella, which made that part look well enough; he sat lolling back in a great elbow-chair, being a heavy, corpulent man, and had his meat brought him by two women slaves; he had two more, one of which fed the squire with a spoon, and the other held the dish with one hand, and scraped off what he let fall upon his worship's beard and taffety vest.

Thus leaving the poor wretch to please himself with our looking at him, as if we admired his pomp, though we really pitied and contemned him, we pursued our journey; only Father Simon had the curiosity to stay to inform himself what dainties the country justice had to feed on in all his state, which he had the honor to taste of, and which was, I think, a iness of boiled rice, with a great piece of garlic in it, and a