YANG-TSE-KIANG. 101 
extensive use amongst the Chinese; but whether as a fruit, a vegetable, 
or a medicine, could not be ascertained. * 
The walls of Nankin, judging from a specimen now in my pos- 
session, are built of a grey compact limestone which frequently 
occurs in quarries in its neighbourhood. 
Leaving this city on the twenty-fourth, the Embassy proceeded 
on their route through a country becoming every day more interest- 
ing from the approach of mountains to the banks of the river, 
and arrived on the 30th at the city of Woo-hoo-shien, remarkable 
for its cleanliness, the size of its shops, and for a temple lately 
erected. The entrance to this was through a succession of arches, 
supported on columns of solid marble highly polished. Their 
vaults were richly carved into figures of the same form as those 
seen in temples established for ages. The building was dedicated 
to the god Fo. 
On the first of November, the Embassy halted at the village of 
Tung-ling-hien, and first gathered the tallow tree, Croton sebtferum of 
Linnaeus, which here seemed to be used merely as fire-wood. 
The banks of the river near the village were very high, and 
exhibited a remarkable stratification. Close to the water was a bed 
of pudding-stone, above this was a bed of red gravel, then a dyke 
of solid rock four or five feet in thickness, and then the soil com- 
posing the surface, also of red gravel. 
On the third, the Embassy arrived at the small town of Ta-tung, 
and remained there in consequence of unfavourable winds till the 
seventh. During this delay, they were much annoyed by a great 
number of public retiring houses, which lined the outskirts of the 
town, by which the boats anchored. These, which we Saw in 
most cities in China, seem constructed rather for exposure than 
* Kaempfer tells us, that the kernel of the fruit is supposed to assist digestion : “ Nuclei 
a prandio adsumpti, eoctionem promovere, ac tumentem ex cibo ventrem laxare di- 
cuntur : inde nunquam ex mensa secunda solennis conviviromitiuhtur.”— Amoeriitates 
Exoticae, p. 812. 
y 
