Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/42

 a blow at it which, had His Majesty been inside, would most effectually have quieted him for ever. It is conjectured that the Emperor had got wind of the conspiracy, and consequently rode in the second chariot instead of in the first; but, however this may be, the fact remains that the vehicle attacked was empty, the intended victim being in another part of the procession. Suspicion seems to have been immediately directed towards Chang Liang, and search was made for him far and near; but he evaded all pursuit, and lived to see the complete overthrow of the usurper's dynasty. His name has since been handed down to posterity as the reputed author of the celebrated Su Shu, and the man who contributed most to founding and consolidating the glorious dynasty of Han.

The lamentable poverty of all the native histories we have consulted precludes us from giving a proper account of the next great occurrence in the reign of Shih Huang Ti. We refer to the building of the Great Wall; an undertaking which is dismissed, with a bare mention of the fact, in about a couple of lines of large type. "In the thirty-second year of his reign"—B.C. 215—"the general Mêng T'ien drove out the invading Huns at the head of 300,000 soldiers, and took possession of the modern province of Honan, dividing it into forty-four departments. He then built the Great Wall, extending it over hill and dale, from the western extremity of Shan-si as far as Kuan-tung in Manchuria; thus covering a stretch of country ten thousand li in length." The event is not considered of sufficient importance to be more particularly described; the genius of the Chinese people, probably, not being such as to render them curious respecting the number of men employed,