Tae Chinese have always preferred when they died to be buried in a coffin ander ground and to be covered with 'a mound of earth. Cremation has had tio charms for them, unless when they became Buddhist priests and desired as fdithfal disciples of the Hindoo religion to follow tle Hindoo mode of interment. The great mises of the people, whether protos or subject, officer or commoner, have alivays been interred in the ground, there to'decay by the rotting process. Avciontly the mound was made four fast high, or about a yard, for an ordinary person, and eight foot for one east of the. city of Yi-chou, It la twenty-five, fest high, about eight miles in circuit, and in form is nearly circular. On the north there was noticed an old gateway. Nearly in the middle is an immense mound called the mourd of Pai-wang. On the south-west i an. other no less than forty fect high. The wall proceeds from this mound to the north-west and south-east. A river coming from the north flows through the old city from the west, in " south. easterly direction. 'There are several villages dispersed through the enclosed space, and rondo' traverse it in various directions, the chief one being from east to west. Inthe large morinda stone hatchet was found four or five inches in length, which had all the appearance of being a genuine relic of the Stone Age, Several pieces of old broken pottery were also found in the immediate neighbourhood. Ina Chinese topographical work, Fang.
chi-yao, this wall is said to be that of the ralr of sin ancient kingdom known as Tai. Thoro were several persons honoured at different times with the title Tai-wang #825. Wo find it about 450 years before Christ, when a Prince with this title was at the instigation of the Prince of Chao assassinated by "his cooke, who used square copper ladles in commit. of the gentry. A feudal baron had a/ ti the murder. His widow, th five feet round and fifteen of the guilty Prince of the Aba d the Emperor's was dom bordering Tai on the south, after. ninety feet in circuit and thirty foot wards committed suicide with a hair-high, In regard to trees the villager pi ud a mountain in the vicinity was should be content with elms to famish named in consequence }§E$¥ li Mo.chi to his cemetery." The gentry, if Shan as an expression of the pity felt they adopted & custom properly accord. by the people for this unhappy princéas. ait with old rules, might have the Soeroral centuries later, after the death poplar of the birch, In front of the of the Emperor Oh'in Shih Huang, a mound where the remains of the feudal general named Hsiang Yii became very lord reposed waved the dark branches powerfal, and burnt the palaces of the of the juniper, in solemn rank and file, deceased Emperor. The fires Inated For the Emperor the aspiring pine was for three months. Haiang Yii restored more cultable, because it combines great many of the old baronies which had green foliage, and over-boon extinguished by Ch'in Shih Huang, ther trees. But the and among them the principality of ambition of individuals or the pride of Tai. Two mon are mentioned as re. sons and grandsons went beyond these ceiving the title Tai-wang, but soon tations when powerful men were China became again a single monarand an author of the third chy under Lin Pang, founder of the century before Christ laments the fact that, tombs were then like monu-Lio Hsi waa mac Not Han dynasty, and this Tporor brother tains in size atid the trees planted in long after, the Hsiung m "Tartare came front like forests; proof sufficient of down the Kalgan Pass in force, and ate wealth in possession, but scarcely a tacked the Tai-wang in his city, Ho fitting emblem of death, Then, after fled to his brother's capital in Shensi, and many years have passed, the trees dis-was for his cowardice lowered in rank. appear and the moand remains, It is These events occurred about B.0. 206, adapted to endore the rain and snow The facts hero collected from the of ages, ind after the revolutions of historians Sze-ma Oh'ien and Pan Ku, contuties lifts ita modest cone upward help us to identify, the old city walls undestroyed. Its shape and its materials embosomed among the mountains a help to, make it endure go long, and any hundred and twenty miles due west of faneral mound one sees may have wit-Peking as the second residence of the tieséed otic, ten, or @ hundred genera-princes known as Tai-wang in the se-of the human race. Que cannot ily tell how meny, in the absence of cond, third, and fifth centuries hok Christ. 'The walls and nine gatey of 2,000 years ago are still there, and MTs Rev. Mark Williams, a mis-constitute another relic of antiquity of sionary resident at Kalgan, visited came epoch as the Great Wall, wait lately' rained city' wall in the neigh. ug to be examined by, the inquiring bourligod of that busy place of This ancient wall is seven miles to traveller., Several interesting archsological question will have to be decided.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.