Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V. IN AND OUT OF CHINA?LIFE IN A LAMASERY. ]HINA and civilization at least, comparative civilization; for after crossing the turbid waters of the Hoang-ho, the travellers, instead of camping out, took up their quarters at an inn with the high-sounding name of the Hotel of Justice and Mercy. The title was prepossessing, and the host himself, though very much the reverse, was amiably anxious to recommend himself and his house?a new one?to his visitors, and to furnish them with such information as his extended acquaintance with men and things?he was an old soldier? had acquired for him. Provisions in this little Chinese town were both abundant and good; and they were to be got easily, which is more than can be said of some places nearer home. All manner of food, cooked and ready for the eating, was at all hours of the day to be had, and brought home to the traveller, at varying prices to suit both rich and poor. Some such plan as that adopted at Ch6-Tsui-Dze, would be amazingly useful to solitary people in London. Two days were spent comfortably here before resuming their progress towards the coal of theirenterprise, and stronghold of Buddhism, Lha-Ssa in Thibet. Once more on the road, an hour's time brought them to the Great Wall of China, or rather, the ruinous portion of it at that point . This celebrated wall was erected about two hundred years before Christ, to check the incursions of the Mantchou Tartars, who subsequently gave a long line of sovereigns to China. It was composed of earth, cased with strong masonry on each side to support it, and having brick-work on the top. It was twenty- five feet high, and twenty-five broad at the base, sloping upwards to a surface of fifteen feet . Its length is about fifteen hundred miles, over hill and over da...