574 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 193 8 



where, we felt sure, there had formerly stood another gate. Flanking 

 this on either side, on top of the rampart were the badly eroded 

 stumps of two mounds. On these, it appeared likely, had once stood 

 twin gate towers, doubtless of wood ; for in the earth about their bases 

 we found embedded numbers of large roofing tiles of the kind already 

 mentioned. Such gate towers seem sometimes at least to have been 

 joined by a covered gallery of wood extending from side to side above 

 the top of the gate proper. 



The Chinese gate tower of later centuries, as is well known, has 

 been a single structure built directly over the opening in the city wall, 

 usually in two or three stories, with the upturned roof corners so 

 familiar on Chinese buildings. 10 What appears to have been the older 

 type, with twin towers flanking the gateway, is still, however, to be 

 seen in a few provincial towns. 



A road passed through this second gap also. Upon entering the 

 city it turned, like the other, at a right angle toward the west. Here, 

 too, this abrupt change in direction seemed to have been determined 

 by a transverse rise in the ground just inside the opening. 



Extending from this second gap directly across the moat to the 

 counterscarp we found what seemed once to have been a causeway, 

 now much broken down. This, as far as we could tell, had not been 

 constructed of terre pise, but had been merely a strip of the original 

 soil, left untouched when the moat was dug; it thus recalled in a way 

 the "interrupted ditches" found at certain prehistoric sites in the 

 Occident. Over its remains passed the road mentioned in the pre- 

 ceding paragraph. We had noticed nothing suggesting the former 

 existence of a similar causeway at the first gap — perhaps an additional 

 indication that the opening there was made at some later period. 



From this point we traced the rampart for some distance farther 

 to the west, and found it growing more and more eroded and worn 

 away, until at length it practically disappeared save for a few un- 

 certain remains. Others, apparently better preserved, we could see 

 far away across the river-plain; but these we had not the time to visit. 



Before we leave our discussion of these earthworks, it will perhaps 

 be of interest to touch briefly on the probable reason for their enormous 

 and seemingly unnecessary thickness. For the tremendous additional 

 labor and expense thus incurred can only have been undertaken for 

 the sake of providing against some very real and compelling danger. 



During the middle of the first millennium B. C. the arts of war and 

 notably of siege-craft made great progress in China. Particularly was 

 this true in regard to the use of mines. These were employed, then 

 as later, for two purposes: the one, to gain direct access to the interiors 

 of beleaguered towns ; the other, to overthrow their ramparts and thus 



>° These upward-curving roof corners were a post-Han development in Chinese architecture. Until long 

 after the beginning of the^Christian era, Chinese roofs had straight lines. 



