INLAND NAVIGATION.

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be alone sufficient to render it so: but besides their great usefulness inwatering the country, and promoting trade, they also add greatly to itsbeauty. They generally contain a clear, deep, and running water, thatglides so softly that it can scarcely be perceived. There is commonlyone in every province, which is to it instead of a road, and runs betweentwo banks, built up with fiat coarse marble stones bound together byothers which are jointed into them.

" One large canal generally runs through every province, and a vastnumber of smaller ones are cut from that large one, which again aresubdivided into still smaller, or rather rivulets, that end at some villageor great town : sometimes they discharge themselves into a lake or largepond, from which all the adjacent country is watered; so that these clearand plentiful streams, embellished by a great number of sine bridges,bounded by neat and convenient banks, equally distributed through vastplains, covered with a numberless multitude of boats and barges, andcrowned (if I may use the expression) with a prodigious number of townsand cities, whose ditches they fill, and whose streets they form, at oncerender that country the most fruitful and most beautiful in the world.

" Surprised, and as it were astonished, at so noble a sight, I have some-times borne a secret envy to China in Europe’s behalf, which must ownthat it can boast nothing in that kind to be compared to the works of theChinese. What would it be then, if that art which in the wildest andmost unlikely places, has raised magnificent palaces, gardens, and groves,had been employed in that rich land to which nature has been lavish ofher most precious gifts !

“ The Chinese say their country formerly was totally overflowed, andthat by dint of labour they drained the water by cutting it a passagethrough these useful canals. If this be true, I cannot enough admire atonce the boldness and industry of their workmen, who have thus made

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