ITS COMPARATIVE USELESSNESS, 587

I mean, that was within my view. And the guide of our caravan,
who had been extolling it for the wonder of the world, was mighty
eager to hear my opinion of it. I told him it was a most excel-
lent thing to keep off the Tartars; which he happened not to
understand as I meant it, and so took it for a compliment. But
the old pilot laughed, ‘“ O Seignior Inglese,” says he, ‘‘ you speak
in colours.” ‘In colours,” said I; “what do you mean by
that?” ‘Why, you speak what looks white this way, and black ©
that way; gay one way, and dull another way. You tell him it is
a good wall to keep out Tartars. You tell me by that, it is good
for nothing but to keep out Tartars, or it will keep out none
but Tartars. I understand you, Seignior Inglese, I understand
you,” says he; “but Seignior Chinese understood you his own
way.” R

“ Well,” says I, “ seignior, do you think it would stand out an
army of our country people, with a good train of artillery; or our
engineers, with two companies of miners; would not they batter
it down in ten days, that an army might enter in battalia, or blow
it up in the air, foundation and all, that there should be no sign
of it left?” ‘Ah, ah,” says he, “I know that.” The Chinese
wanted mightily to know what I said, and I gave him leave to
tell him a few days after, for he was then almost out of their
country, and he was to leave us in a little time afterward; but
when he knew what I had said, he was dumb all the rest of the
way, and we heard no more of his fine story of the Chinese power
and greatness, while he stayed.

After we had passed this mighty nothing called a wall, some-
thing like the Picts’ wall, and so famous in Northumberland, and
built by the Romans, we began to find the country thinly in-
habited, and the people rather confined to live in fortified towns
and cities, as being subject to the inroads and depredations of the
Tartars, who rob in great armies, and therefore are not to be
resisted by the naked inhabitants of an open country.

And here I began to find the necessity of keeping together in a
caravan as we travelled, for we saw several troops of Tartars roving
about; but when I came to see them distinctly, I wondered more

that the Chinese empire could be conquered by such contemptible