THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA.

Maori Messenger : Te Karere Maori, Volume 2, Issue 40, 4 July 1850, Page 4

THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA.

One of the grentest curiosities, of the artificial kind, that China affords, and which may be reckoned one of the most astonishing remains of antiquity now in the world, is that prodigious wall built by the Chinese to prevent the frequent incursions o! the Tartars. This wall, Du Malde informs us, is higher and broader than the common walls of the cities of China; that i.-, about twenty-five feet in • height, and broad enough for bix horsemen to ride abreast upon it ; and it is fortified all along >vitli strong square towers, at proper distances, to the number of three thousand, which in the lime of the Chinese monarch*, before the Tartars subdued the country, used to be guarded by a million of soldiers; The whole length of this wall, with all its windings, is computed at near one thousand five hundred miles, running all along the three northern provinces of Pekin, Shansi, and Shensi, and built on some places which seem inaccessible, as well as over rivers and such marshes and sandy hollows, as appear utterly incapable of admitting a foundation for so weighty a structure. It is chiefly built of brick, and so strongly cemented with an extraordinary kind of mortar, thai though it has stood above two thousand years, exposed to all winds and weathers, it is very little decayed; and the terrace on the top seems still as firm as ever.

This amazing wall was built by the Emperor Chihohaunt, according to some authors, or Tainchiwhang, according to Du lla'de, above two hundred years before the birth of our Saviour; and, though of such stupendous length and breadth, and carried on over mountains and valleys, it was completed within the space of five years, if we may credit the Chinese tradition. — Wonders of Nature and Art.