Page:Peking the Beautiful.pdf/76

 China's Ten-Thousand-Li Rampart OMEONE has aptly said: "To study the history of Egypt one should y place himself on the top of the pyramids. To study the history of China there is no point of observation so favorable as the summit of the Great Wall. Erected midway between the hazy obscurity of early tradition and the testless age in which we live, il commands the whole moving panorama." It was away back in the year 214 B, C. that the remarkable idea of building such a wall was conceived; and its author was none other than the notorious Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, one of the greatest Empire builders that China has ever known, but hated and universally execrated because of his terrible persecution of the literati of his day. Having stamped out the embers of sedition within his dominions, the Imperial tyrant next turned his attention to the dangers threatening his empire from without. "On the west the mountains of Tibet formed a natural barrier; on the south the river Yangtze held back the barbarous tribes who inhabited its right bank; on the east the sea was a safe guard; but the north was a quarter from which the kings of Ch'in had leamed to expect their most troublesome enemies." A strange idea then came into the head of this enterprising emperor - Why not keep back these northern hordes by walling them out? At this time the whole empire, from the desert to the sea, was his, and he resolved to construct a barrier which would prove effectual in keeping back these hardy northern warriors, and thus Tender his vast kingdom safe and secure from all danger of invasion, Ch'in Shih Huang Ti was a man of action, and almost itamediately work was begun on the Dall under the able direction of his famous general Mang T'ien, "A million men were sent to the northern frontier, some laboring as masons, others serving as guards; and within a single decade the vast work was accomplished." Tradition has it that tens of thousands of these poor laborers, drafted into this vas! army of wall builders, lost their lives before its completion, and were buried in or beneath the giant ramparts. Hence to many, especially among the Chinese, this vast monu ment-for ages chiefest among the seven wonders of the ancient world is regarded as a symbol of oppression and cruelty, and not as a wall of protection and security. The Great Wall is perhaps the only structure built by the hands of man large enough and vast enough to constitute a geographical feature. "Stretching across the entire frontiers of China - winding its sinuous course over the crests of rugged mountains and barren hills - mounting crags and dipping down into valleys, the great quardian barrier extends in almost unbroken line from the desert of far-away Kansu in the west to the golden sands of the Pacific in the east," a distance of over fifteen hundred miles. For a further description of the Wall, see pages 16 and 112.