The boy travellers in the Far East : adventures of two youths ... - Library

A DAY AT THE GREAT WALL. 387
sand years ago, ami is about twelve lumdred miles long. It j-nns west-
ward from the sliores of the Gulf of Pe-eliidi to what was then the west-
ern frontier of the Chinese Empire. For the greater part of tlie wa}' it
C(jnsists of a wall of earth faced with stone or In-ick, and it is paved on the
top M'ith large tiles. It is about twenty-five feet wide at the bottom, and
diminishes to fifteen feet wide at the top, with a height of tliirty feet. In
many places it is not so substantial as this, being nothing more tlian a wall
of earth faced with brick, and not more than lifteen feet high. At vary-
ing intervals there are towers for watchmen and soldiers. They are gen-
erally forty or fifty feet high, and about three hundred feet apart.
"The wall follows all the inequalities of the surface of the earth,
winding over mountains and through valleys, crossing rivers by massive
archways, and stretching straight as a sunbeam over the level plain.
" Tliink wliat a work this Mould l)e at the jiresent day, and then re-
member that it was built two thousand years ago, when tlie science of
engineering was in its infancy, and the various mechanical appliances for
moving heavy bodies were unknown !
" We spent a day at the Great Wall. We scrambled over the ruins
and climbed to the top of one of the towers, and we had more than one
tumble among the remains of the great enterprise of twenty centuries
ago. Then wo started back to Pekin, and returned with aching limbs
and a general feeling that we had had a hard journey. But we were well
satisfied that we had been there, and would not have missed seeing the
Great Wall for twice the fatigue and trouble. They told us in Pekin
that some travellers have been imposed on by seeing only a piece of a
wall about thirty miles from the city, which the guides pretend is the real
one. They didn't try the trick on us, and probably thought it would not
be of any use to do so.
"We did not stay long in Pekin after we got back from the Great
Wall, as we had to catch tlie steamer at Tien-tsin. Here we are steaming
down the coast, and having a jolly time. We are on the same ship that
took us up from Shanghai, and so we feel almost as if we had got home
ao-ain. But we are aware that liome is yet a long way off, and we have
many a mile between us and the friends of whom we think so often."