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HISTORY OF

“ We meet with no such sluices in the Grand Canal, because the em-peror’s barks, that are as large as our frigates, could not be raised byforce of arm, nay would infallibly be split in the fall. All the difficultyconsists in surmounting these torrents of which I have spoken: yet this iswhat they perform successfully, though not without some trouble andexpence.

“ These water passages, as they call them, are necessary for the transpor-tation of grain and stuffs, which they fetch from the southern provinces,and carry to Pekin. There are, if we may give credit to the Chinese, athousand barks, from eighty to an hundred tons, that make a voyageonce a year, all of them freighted for the emperor, without reckoningthose of particular persons, which are innumerable. When these prodi-gious fleets set out, one would imagine they carry the tribute of all thekingdoms of the east, and that one of those voyages alone was capable ofsupplying all Tartary with a sufficiency for its subsistence for severalyears. But Pekin alone receives the benefit of it; and this would bescarcely any, did not the province contribute besides to the maintenanceof the inhabitants of that vast city, the circumference of which is sixgreat leagues, allowing thirty-six hundred paces to a league, and containsat least two millions of people; and it has been judged to contain notless than six millions of fouls, and that the two millions are only men,without reckoning women and children: but the exact number is verydifficult, if at all, to be ascertained.

" The Chinese not only make canals for the convenience of travellers,but they also dig many others, to catch the rain water which comes downfrom the mountains, and with which they water the fields in time ofdrought, more espei^ally in the northern provinces. During the wholesummer, you may see the country people busied in raising this waterinto abundance of small ditches or channels, which they cut across thefields. In other places tflly contrive great reservoirs of turf, the bottom

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