Page:Ningpo to Shanghai.djvu/40

26 Dzing-yuen, is seventeen lé, nearly six miles, due north from Yuen-maou, over a splendid road, wide enough for a carriage and pair with outriders;&mdash;the surrounding country being not unlike the small arable downs of England. Approaching Dzing, the stream is again met running shallow and fast from the westward; crossing which the road, through groves and hedge rows of bamboos and mulberry trees, and fields of wheat and barley, is a perfect zig-zag, until it reaches a wider and deeper stream, crossed by a substantial starlinged bridge.

On the southern bank of the stream, skirting the suburbs of Dzing, is a small monastery, in which the foreign traveller can obtain quarters, though less luxurious than those of the Tow-va-sze. A tablet here records the setting off of a large tract of the river for the preservation of life; and fishing within it, in order than life may be sustained, is not allowed.

Very good boiled bread, in not less than four catties at a boiling, can be obtained at Dzing, if ordered over night, at 40 cash per catty. Buffalo milk is procurable too occasionally. The city walls, some three or four miles in extent, are in good condition; on the northern face running sharply up a hill for a considerable distance. Dzing is a quiet place, with the character of being the abode of many of the literati. Of general business there appears to be but little. A temple to Confucius, and some excellently carved stone work, are objects of attraction in the centre of the town. The condemnable custom of leaving the coffins of the dead above ground, is not practised here so freely as at Ningpo and other parts of the province; and for miles the hills in the spring time are seen 