176 PREJUDICES AGAINST FOO-CHEW-FOO 



still, supposing the trade once to be set in action 

 and progressing, they are not likely to present 

 serious and permanent obstacles to a people who 

 have carried the great wall of China over moun- 

 tains and through vallies for a distance of a 

 thousand miles ; who have constructed that great 

 work, the grand canal, extending in an irregular 

 line for five hundred miles, with its spacious quays 

 and locks of solid granite and marble ; who have 

 turned the course of a rapid river * ; directing, by 

 a happy conception of genius, one stream to flow 

 to the north, and the other to the south ; who 

 have cut capacious passes over lofty mountains, 

 as the Ta-moey-lingf, in Kiang-sy, and the pass of 

 Pu-ching-hien J, in Fokien, and other passes of the 

 empire, solely for the purpose of increasing the 

 facilities of communication and transport of goods. 

 Nor is it easy to And any part of the habitable 

 globe where the mountain streams and rivers have 

 been turned, by art and enterprise, to an equally 

 beneficial account for the economic purposes of 

 irrigation and navigation ; and still less where a 

 complete water-communication, perfectly uninter- 

 rupted and unimpeded by mountains and land 

 journeys, has been secured by a favourable confi- 



* The River Luen, at the summit level of the Grand Canal. 

 See Staunton's Embassy to China, vol. ii. p. 387. 

 f Ibid. p. 507. 

 J Du Halde's China, vol. i. p. 87., translation. 



