SINO-MONGOLIAN FRONTIER 
badger (Meles leptorhynchus) and a wild cat’s skin 
were purchased. 
One day we visited a peculiar fort guarding a 
gate in the Great Wall, through which once passéd 
the high road between Yi-lin Fu and Pao-t’ou, 
a large town on the northern border of the Ordos. 
The fort consists of three massive blocks of masonry 
built one upon the other. The largest at the 
base measures ninety feet square, while the whole 
edifice is about ninety feet high. 
The Wall all along the Ordos border has crumbled 
away, leaving little more than a slight ridge. 
The watch towers which are situated at intervals 
of about three hundred yards, are, however, intact 
and serve still to mark the boundary line. It is 
obvious that the Wall in these parts was not faced 
with brick. 
Yii-lin Fu is a prosperous military town with 
some seven thousand inhabitants. It is supposed 
to maintain a garrison of one thousand men to 
overawe the Mongols. Its walls are in good 
repair, and enclose many elegant temples. Like 
all the other border towns that we passed Yi-lin 
Fu is for ever threatened with inundation by the 
vast sea of sand that rolls in from the north and 
west. But for the river that flows past its western 
wall the city would long ago have been submerged, 
and even now the officials are continually perplexed 
with the problem, as sand, sweeping round from 
the north, banks itself against the eastern wall in 
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