China's Great Wall.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 192, 19 February 1887, Page 2

China's Great Wall.

Of course we had to go to the great wall of China, gays the Peking correspondent of the Davenport "Democrat.'' China abounds in great walls. Her mural defences were most extensive— walled country, walled cities, walled villages, walled palaces and temples— wall after wall and wall within wall. But the greatest of all is the great, wall of China, which' crests the mountain ranges and" crosses the gorge from here some'forty miles away. Squeezing through the last deep gorge and a deep rift in the solid rook, out out by ages of rolling wheels and tramping feet, we reached the great frowning, double dabtioned gate of stone and hard burned bricks —one archway tumbled in. This was the , object of our mission— the great wall of China,, built 213 years before our era ; built of great slabs of wall hewn stone, laid in j, regular courses some twenty feet high, and then topped out with large hard-burned ' bricks, filled in with earth and closely paved on top with more dark, tawny brick— the ramparts high and thick and castellated for ; the use of arms. Right and left- the great i wall sprang far up the mountain side— now straight, now curved, to meet the mountain ridge, turretted each 300 feet— a frowning structure built to keep the warlike Tartars out— 2s feet high by forty thick, 1,200 I miles long, with room on top for six horses to be driven abreast, Nor need I tell you that for 1,400 years it kept those bordeß at bay, nor that in the main the material used upon it is just as good and firm and strong as when put in place. Twelve hundred miles of this gigantic work, builc on the rugged craggy mountain tops, vaulting over gorges, spanning wide streams, netting the river archways with huge, hard bars of copper; with double gates, with swinging doors and bars eet thick with iron armour — a wonder in the world, before which j the old-time classic seven wonders, all gone nove (save the great pyramid), were toys. The great pyramid hap 85,000,000 cubic feet, the great wall 6,350,000,000 cubic feet An engineer in Steward's party, here i pome years ago, gave it as his opinion that the cost of this wall, figuring labour at the same rate, would more than equal that of all the 100,000 miles of railroad in the United States. The material ifc contains would build a wall six feet high and two feet thick right straight around the globe. Yet this was done in only twenty years, without a trace of debt or bond. It is the greatest individual labour the world has ever known.