Note 011 A plain in the Chinese Tartary, only eighty leagues from the great wall, was found by the missionaries to be three thousand geometrical paces above the level of the sea. Montesquieu, who has used and abused the relations of travellers, deduces the revolutions of Asia from this important circumstance, that heat and cold, weakness and strength, touch each other without any temperate zone (The Spirit of Laws, 1. xvii. c. 3).

---

The History Of The Decline and Fall Of The Roman Empire— Chapter 26