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,