Which offers a charming view at the moment when all the houses are lighting up.”
This will suffice to give an idea of these landscapes, the most beautiful in China. The views are of infinite variety, and each point has some natural charm, or has attaching to it some memorable event, historical or legendary. So it is very difficult to represent all there is to be described here, even with the paint-brush. Man is unable to portray all the beauties which Nature, the real artist, so prodigiously displays.
CHAPTER XII
BATHING
There was a tropical heat that day, not a breath of wind stirring, and not a shady corner to be found anywhere. It was one of those stifling and suffocating days of our Chinese summer. I was trying to find some place where to spend the afternoon with some degree of comfort, when some one knocked at my door.
They were friends of mine, who had come to ask me to go bathing with them. They had been considerate enough to bring a sedan-chair for my use with them, and so off we went.
Beyond the N.E. gate of Fou-Tcheou there is a warm sulphurous spring, which is very much frequented by the inhabitants of the town. Some go and bathe in the common pool, which is reserved for the cure of diseases of the skin; others, who come either for cleanliness or merely for pleasure, take private cabins. I need not say that there are separate pools for the two sexes.