d night, itinerant restaurateurs bring to your
house whatever provisions you need: soups, ragouts of mutton and beef,
vegetables, pastry, rice, vermicelli, etc. There are dinners for every
appetite, and for every purse--from the complicated banquet of the rich,
to the simple and clear broth of the beggar. These restaurateurs are
coming and going to and fro almost without interval. They are generally
Moslems--a blue cap distinguishing them from the Chinese.

After two days repose in the Inn of Justice and Mercy, we proceeded on
our way. The environs of Che-Tsui-Dze are uncultivated. On all sides,
nothing is to be seen but sand and gravel, drifted by the annual
inundation of the Yellow River. However, as you advance, the soil,
becoming imperceptibly higher, improves. An hour's distance from the
town, we crossed the Great Wall, or rather passed over some miserable
ruins that still mark the ancient site of the celebrated rampart of
China. The country soon becomes magnificent, and we could not but admire
the agricultural genius of the Chinese people. The part of Kan-Sou which
we were traversing, is especially remarkable by its ingenious and
extensive works for facilitating the irrigation of the fields.

By means of creeks cut in the banks of the Yellow River, the waters are
conveyed into broad artificial canals; these again supply others of a
larger size, which, in their turn, fill the ditches with which all the
fields are surrounded. Sluices, great and small, admirable in their
simplicity, serve to raise the water and to carry it over all the
inequalities of the land. The distribution of the water is perfectly
arranged; each landowner waters his fields in his turn, and no one is
allowed to open his flood-gate before his regularly appointed time.

Few villages are met with; but you observe, in all directions, farms of
various sizes separated from one another by meadows. The eye does not
rest upon either groves or pleasure-gardens. Except a few large trees
round the dwellings, all the land is devoted to the cultivation of corn;
they do not even reserve a space for stacking the harvest, but pile it up
on the tops of the houses, which are always flat-roofed. On the days of
the general irrigation, the country gives you a perfect idea of those
famous inundations of the Nile, the descriptions of which have become so
classic. The inhabitants traverse their fields in small skiffs, or in
light carts with enormous whee