ATA THE. LIFE AND ADVENTURES

 

 

—they have neither discipline in the field, exercise in their arms, skill
to attack, nor temper to retreat. And therefore, I must confess, it
seemed strange to me when I came home, and heard our people say
sush fine things of the power, riches, glory, magnificence, and trade
of the Chinese, because I saw and knew that they were a contemptible.
herd or crowd of ignorant, sordid slaves, subjected to a government
qualified only to rule such a people; and, in a word—for I am now
launched quite beside my design—I say, in a word, were not its dis-
tance inconceivably great from Muscovy, and were not the Muscovite
empire almost as rude, impotent, and ill governed a crowd of slaves
as they, the Czar of Muscovy might, with much ease, drive them all
out of their country, and conquer them in one campaign; and had the
czar, who, I since hear, is a growing prince, and begins to appear for-
midable in the world, fallen this way instead of attacking the warlike
Swedes (in which attempt none of the powers of Europe would have
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, are im-
perfect and impotent, compared to the same things in Europe. Also,
in their knowledge, their learning, their skill in the sciences: they have
globes and spheres, and a smatch of the knowledge of the mathema-
tics; but when you come to inquire into their knowledge, how short-
sighted are the wisest of their students! They know nothing of the
motion of the heavenly bodies; and so grossly, absurdly ignorant, that
when the sun is eclipsed, they think it is a great dragon has assaulted
and run away with it, and they fall a clattering with all the drams 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 this kind which I have made in all
the account I have given of my travels, so I shall make no mure
descriptions of countries and people: it is none of my business, or any
part of my design; but giving an account of my own adventures,
through a life of infinite wanderings, and a long variety of changes,
which, perhaps, few have heard the like of, I shall say nothing of the
mighty places, desert countries, and numerous people, I have yet to
pass through, more than relates to my own story, and which my con-
cern among them will make necessary. I was now, as near as I can
compute, in the heart of China, about the latitude of thirty degrees
north of the line, for we were returning 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