n blue paint. On the walls of the rooms were
small square tiles of the best ware, with red, blue, and green paint of
all shades and hues, in rare forms, done in good taste; and as they use
the same kind of earth to join the tiles with, you could not see where
the tiles met. The floors of the rooms were made of the same ware, and
as strong as those we have at home; and the same may be said of the
roofs, but they were of a dark shade. If we had had more time to spare,
I should have been glad to have seen more of this house, for there were
the ponds for the fish, the walks, the yards, and courts, which were
all made in the same way. This odd sight kept me from my friends for two
hours, and when I had come up to them, I had to pay a fine to our chief,
as they had to wait so long.

In two days more we came to the Great Wall, which was made as a fort
to keep the whole land safe,--and a great work it is. It goes in a long
track for miles and miles, where the rocks are so high and steep that
no foe could climb them; or, if they did, no wall could stop them. The
Great Wall is as thick as it is high, and it turns and winds in all
sorts of ways.

We now saw, for the first time, some troops of the hordes I spoke of,
who rove from place to place, to rob and kill all whom they meet with.
They know no real mode of war, or skill in fight. Each has a poor lean
horse, which is not fit to do good work. Our chief gave some of us leave
to go out and hunt as they call it, and what was it but to hunt sheep!
These sheep are wild and swift of foot, but they will not run far, and
you are sure of sport when you start in the chase. They go in flocks of
a score, or two, and like true sheep, keep close when they fly. In this
sort of chase it was our hap to meet with some two score of the wild
hordes, but what sort of prey they had come to hunt I know not. As soon
as they saw us, one of them blew some loud notes on a kind of horn, with
a sound that was quite new to me. We all thought this was to call their
friends round them, and so it was, for in a short time a fresh troop of
the same size came to join them; and they were all, as far as we could
judge, a mile off. One of the Scots was with us, and as soon as he heard
the horn, he told us that we must lose no time, but draw up in line, and
charge them at once. We told him we would, if he would take the lead.

They stood still, and cast a wild gaze at us, like a mere crowd, drawn
up in no line; but