Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/105

 purposes. The mountains, inaccessible by nature, are nevertheless crowned by a wall as formidable as that which bars the valleys.

What could have been the object of this gigantic work? How many millions of human hands must have laboured at it! What a vain expenditure of national strength! History records that this wall was built, upwards of two centuries before the birth of Christ, by the Chinese sovereigns, to protect their empire from the inroads of the neighbouring nomads; but we also read that the periodical irruptions of the barbarians were never checked by this artificial barrier, behind which China ever lacked, and even now lacks, that sure defence of a nation — moral strength.

The Great Wall, however, which the Chinese estimate to be about 3,300 miles long, and which is continued on one side into the heart of Manchuria, and on the other a long way beyond the upper course of the Yellow River, is very inferior in those parts more remote from Peking. Here it was built under the eyes of the Emperor and his chief officers of state, and is therefore a gigantic work; but in those distant localities, far removed from the supervision of the superior government, the celebrated Great Wall, which Europeans are wont to regard as a characteristic feature of China, is nothing but a dilapidated mud rampart, 21 feet high. The missionaries HuC and Gabet mention this fact in the