The great road to the capital lay across an open country, sandy and ill cultivated, and the few houses on each side were of mean appearance, generally built with mud, or half burnt bricks, to the very gates of Pekin. The middle part of the road, for the width of eighteen or twenty feet, was paved with stones of granite from six to sixteen feet in length and broad in proportion. Every one of these enormous flag stones must have been brought, at least sixty miles, the nearest mountains where quarries of granite are found being those that divide China from Mantchoo Tartary, near the great wall. A temple on the right of the road and a bridge of white marble having the balustrade ornamented with figures, meant to represent lions and other animals cut out of the same material, were the only objects that attracted any notice, until the walls and the lofty gates of the capital appeared in view. None of the buildings within, on this side of the city, overtopped the walls, though these did not appear to exceed twenty-five or at most thirty feet in height; they were flanked with square towers, and surrounded by a moat or ditch. These towers projected about forty feet from the line of the wall, and were placed at regular intervals of about seventy yards, being considered as bow-shot distance from each other. Each had a small guard-house upon its summit. The thickness of the base of the wall was about twenty-five feet, and the width across this top within the parapets twelve feet; so that the sides of the wall have a very considerable slope, much more however within than without. The middle part was composed of the earth that had been dug out of the ditch; and was kept together by two retaining walls, part of which were of brick and part of stone. The famous barrier on the borders of Tartary, and the ramparts of all the cities in the country, are built in the same manner. No cannon were mounted on the walls nor on the bastions; but in the high building which surmounted the gate, and which was several stories one above the other, the port-holes were closed with red doors, on the outside of which were painted the representations of cannon, not unlike at a distance the sham ports in a ship of war. The gates of a Chinese city are generally double, and placed in the flanks of a square or semicircular bastion. The first opens into a large space, surrounded with buildings, which are appropriated entirely for military uses, being the depôt of provisions and ammunition, _place d'armes_, and barracks. Out of this place, in one of the flanks, the second gate, having a similar high building erected over it as the first, opens into the city.