11. 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).