Page:To the Court of the Emperor of China - vol I.djvu/21

xxii possible to give the suburbs in the same detail as the city, because my knowledge of them was not equally correct. I have therefore contented myself with indicating the principal streets that lead and adjoin to the gates of the town, together with the two well-known edifices, the temple of Heaven, and that of the Earth. The rest of the suburbs, in fact, present nothing to the eye but a piece of ground very irregularly built upon, in which are plots of cultivated land, and empty spaces, so that one half of it is yet without buildings, as we had an opportunity of clearly perceiving on the fifteenth of February 1795, when we left Pe-king. It appeared to me better to, leave something imperfect in this respect, than to put errors in the place of things of which I was ignorant.

I hope, however, that this will be no reason why a map so interesting should be less agreeable to the curious than my relation itself; especially as I have also a number of other drawings and views, which by their