the habit of advertising their wares, by long projecting signs, hung out in front of their houses, painted in the gayest colours; while the bustling crowd, perpetually thronging the principal avenues, contributes to enliven and animate the scene. In the southern division of the city, is an enclosure, about two miles in circumference, where the emperor and his great officers annually go through the ceremony of ploughing and sowing the seed; in order to set an example to the subjects of this vast empire, and to encourage agriculture, from which the greatest part of their support is derived. Notwithstanding these vacant spaces in the city of Pekin, the population is so dense where the citizens reside, that the number of inhabitants cannot be much less than two millions. Such, then, is the seat of government, and such the palaces and buildings it contains; worthy the metropolis of a great and civilized country.
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