Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/20

 pansion during a very long period was hardly noticeable, wars and expeditions tending to monopolize their attention and breaking up the country into petty states in spite of the Imperial rule. The North China of to-day was then nothing but an arid frontier-land, a glacis; and the present metropolitan province of Chihli as wild as much of Mongolia still is. That barbarian raiders from the wastes of Central Asia were a pest from the earliest times, and harried the race as soon as it had acquired ease and wealth from tillage, may be gathered from the policy of the Emperor Chin Shih Huang-ti ( 249—206). It was this ruler who is still celebrated in the Annals for two dissimilar yet closely-related acts: he burned China's classics, because they were bringing decadence to the race, and began the building of the Great Wall as a protection for his newly-formed Empire.

The oldest capitals of China, Hsianfu in Shensi and Loyang in Honan, were soon directly protected by this vast rampart which was methodically extended by succeeding dynasties, until in the time of the Mings the last gap between the Mongolian mountains and the sea was finally closed at Shanhaikwan. Yet neither the Great Wall nor the great sacrifice of learn-