38 ON CHINESE GARDENS. 



form the finest verdure, the most brilliant, harmonious colour- 

 ing imaginable. The buildings are spacious, splendid and nu- 

 merous, every scene being marked by one or more ; some of 

 them contrived for banquets, balls, learned disputations, rope- 

 dancing, and feats of activity ; others again for bathing, swim- 

 ming, reading, sleeping, or meditation. 



In the centre of these summer plantations, there is a large tract 

 of ground set aside for more secret and voluptuous pleasures, 

 which is laid out in a great number of close walks, colonades and 

 passages, turned with many intricate windings, so as to confuse 

 and lead the passenger astray ; being sometimes divided with 

 thickets, of underwood, intermixed with straggling large trees ; 

 and other times by higher plantations, or by clumps of the tse-tan, 

 (a very large species of the rose tree, the wood of which is un- 

 commonly beautiful, and used by the Chinese workmen for tables, 

 cabinets, &c.) common rose-trees, and other lofty shrubs. The 

 whole is a wilderness of sweets, adorned with all kinds of gaudy 

 productions. Gold and silver pheasants, pea-fowls, patridges, 

 bantam and golden hens, quails, and game of every kind, swarm 

 in the woods ; doves, nightingales, and a thousand melodious 

 birds, perch upon the branches, deer, antelopes, musk goata, 

 spotted buffaloes, shen-si sheep, (a sort of sheep with very long 

 tails, which trail upon the ground), and Tartarean horses frisk 

 upon the plains. Every walk leads to some delightful object ; 

 to troves of orange and myrtle, to rivulets, whose banks are clad 

 with roses, woodbine and jessamine ; to murmuring fountains, 

 with statues of sleeping nymphs, and water gods ; to cabinets of 

 verdure, with beds of aromatic herbs and flowers; to grottos cut 

 in rocks, adorned with incrustations of coral shells, ores, gems, 

 and chrystalizations, refreshed with rills of sweet scented water, 

 and cooled by fragrant, artificial breezes. 



Amongst the thickets which divide the walks, are many se- 

 cret recesses; in each of which there is an elegant pavilion, con- 

 sisting of one state apartment, with out houses, and proper con- 

 veniences for eunuchs and women servants. These are inha- 

 bited, during the summer, by their fairest and most accom- 

 plished concubines; each of them, with her attendants, occu- 

 pying a separate pavilion. 



The principal apartments of these buildings, consists of one or 

 more large saloons, two cabinet or dressing rooms, a library, a 

 couple of bed chambers and waiting rooms, a bath, and several 



