Barrow, Travels in China, 1804

The whole of their architecture, indeed, is as unsightly as unsolid; without elegance or convenience of design, and without any settled proportion; mean in its appearance and clumsy in the workmanship. Their pagodas o five, seven, and nine rounds, or roofs, are the most striking objects; but though they appear to be the imitations or, perhaps, more properly speaking, the models of a similar kind of pyramid found in India, they are neither so well designed, nor so well executed; they are, in fact, so very ill constructed that half of them, without any marks of antiquity, appear in ruins; of these useless and whimsical edifices His Majesty’s garden at Kew exhibits a specimen, which is not inferior in any respect to the very best I have met in China. The height of such structures, and the badness of the materials with which they are usually built, contradict the notion that they assign as a reason for the lowness of their houses, which is, that they may escape being thrown down by earthquakes. In fact, the tend stands confessed in all their dwellings, of which the curved roof and the wooden pillars (in imitation of the poles) forming a colonnade round the ill-built brick walls, clearly denote the origin; and from this original form they have never ventured to deviate. Their temples are mostly constructed upon the same plan, with the addition of a second, and sometimes a third roof, one above the other. The wooden pillars that constitute the colonnade are generally of larch fir, of no settled proportion between the length and the diameter, and they are invariably painted red and sometimes covered with a coat of varnish. [330]

/ / /

Next to the pagodas, the most conspicuous objects are the gates of cities. These are generally square buildings, carried several stories ave the arched gateway and, like the temples, are covered with one or more large projecting roofs. But the most stupendous work of this country is the great wall that divides it from northern Tartary. It is built exactly upon the same plan as the wall of Pekin, being a mound of earth cased on [333] each side with bricks or stone. The astonishing magnitude of the fabric consists no so much in the plan of the work, as in the immense distance of fifteen hundred miles over which it is extended, over mountains of two and three thousand feet in height, across deep valleys and rivers. But the elevation, plans, and sections fo this wall and its towers have been taken with such truth and accuracy by the late Captain Parish, of the Royal Artillery, that all further description would be superfluous. They are to be found in Sir George Staunton’s valuable account of the embassy to China.

The same Emperor, who is said to have committed the barbarous act of destroying the works of the learned, raised this stupendous fabric, which has no parallel in the whole world, not even in the pyramids of Egypt, the magnitude of the largest of these containing only a very small portion of the quantity of matter comprehended in the great wall of China. This indeed is so enormous, that admitting,what I believe has never been denied, its length to be fifteen hundred miles, and the dimensions throughout pretty much the same as where it was crossed by the British Embassy, the material of all the dwelling-houses of England and Scotland, supposing them to amount to one million eight hundred thousand, and to average on the whole two thousand cubic feel of masonry or brick-work, are barely equivalent to the bulk of solid contents of the great wall of China. Nor are the projecting massy towers of stone and brick included in this calculation. These alone, supposing them to continue throughout at bow-shot distance, were calculated to contain as much masonry and brickwork as all London. To [334] give another idea of the mass of matter in this stupendous fabric, it may be observed, that it is more than sufficient to surround the circumference of the earth on two of its great circles, with two walls, each six feet high and two feet thick! It is to be understood, however, that in this calculation is included the earthy part in the middle of the wall. …  [335]