In its
present condition the Great Wall belongs to various epochs. With the
sudden and violent transitions of temperature in the severe Mongolian
climate, it may be doubted whether any portion of Shi Hoangti's original
work still survives. Nearly all the eastern section, from Ordos to the
Yellow Sea, was rebuilt in the fifth century, and the double rampart along
the northwest frontier of the plains of Peking was twice restored in the
fifteenth and sixteenth. North of Peking, where this prodigious structure
has a mean height of about twenty-six feet, and width of twenty feet, it
is still in a state of perfect repair, whereas in many western districts
along the Gobi frontier, as here before us, it is little more than an
earthen rampart about fifteen feet in height, while for considerable
distances, as along the road from Su-chou to Kan-chou, it has entirely
disappeared for miles at a stretch. Both the gate and the wall at this
point had been recently repaired. We could now see it rising and falling
in picturesque undulations as far as the Tibetan ranges. There it stops
altogether, after a westward course of over fifteen hundred miles. In view
of what was before us, we could not but smile as we thought of that French
abbe who undertook, in an elaborate volume, to prove that the "Great Wall
of China" was nothing more than a myth.

We were now past another long anticipated land-mark, and before us, far
down in the plain, lay the city of Su-chou, which, as the terminal point
of the Chinese telegraph-line, would bring us again into electric touch
with the civilized world. But between us and our goal lay the Edzina
river, now swollen by a recent freshet. We began to wade cautiously
through with luggage and wheels balanced on our shoulders. But just at
that moment we perceived, approaching from the distance, what we took to
be a mounted Chinese mandarin, and his servant leading behind him two
richly caparisoned and riderless horses. At sight of us they spurred
ahead, and reached the opposite bank just as we passed the middle of the
stream. The leader now rose in his stirrups, waved his hat in the air and
shouted, in clear though broken English, "Well, gentlemen, you have
arrived at last!" To hear our mother tongue so unexpectedly spoken in this
out-of-the-way part of the world, was startling. This strange individual,
although clad in the regular mandarin garb, was light-complexioned, and
had an auburn instead of a black queue da