TIIK C.RlvAT WALL OI" CHINA. 5 



As I remember, il was in the latter part of August, 27 years 

 ago. Our ship was anchored at Shan Hai Quan on the Peche- 

 lee Gulf, a branch, or rather a bulge of the Yellow Sea, latitude 

 40° north, longitude 126° east of Greenwich. 



A lovely morning. The gig was piped away, and the cap- 

 tain invited such of the officers as were not on duty to go 

 ashore and see the G^eat Wall, a branch of which reached the 

 water at about a half a mile from where we were lying, while 

 the rest of it stretched and crawled over the hills in a northerly 

 direction, so like the little, old fashioned pictures we used to see 

 so long, so long ago in the geography books that it was absurd. 



What we saw on drawing near was a solid wall, ended at 

 one end and endless at the other, thirty-five feet high, twenty- 

 four feet thick, and said to be anywhere from 1200 to 1500 

 miles long. The part immediately in sight was chiselled over 

 with the names of many men-of-war of many nations. 



We landed and saw a few listless Chinamen. 



But, coming close beneath that unmatched structure it was 

 seen to be a strong outside of burned bricks, 18 x 10 x 4 inches. 

 Burned bricks of 720 inches in cubical content. This casing- 

 was filled in with, I do not know what, but, something said to 

 be a kind of mortar. Whatever it be the erection is as sound 

 and solid as if no twenty centuries had been trying to gently 

 pass it out of existence, but rather as if twenty months or so 

 had set the well cemented joints. And we sought in vain to 

 persuade each himself and so the others, that such feats of clay 

 baking could be exhibited in our own favored land. 



A narrow, suitably crooked staircase, of stone, and as solid 

 as the roots of the everlasting mountains, led us, darkling, to 

 the top, and there before us was a path 



"Men might walk on, nor l)e pressed, 

 Twelve abreast," 



somewhat overgrown with bushes, as is usual in such places, 

 stone paved, relieved at certain intei-vals by a little tower such 

 as we had just passed through to reach the place — a tower, 

 that is, of access, and bordered by a battlemented parapet. 



