Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 February 1885 — China Within the Great Wall. [ARTICLE]

China Within the Great Wall.

Of the ancient Great Wall, only a low rampart remains, with square towers diminishing towards the top. These towers are generally placed on the summits of the mountains across which the wall winds. I ascended one of them, the better to contemplate the view, but had no one with whom to share all the admiration that I felt at this moment. It is quite impossible to describe all that the eye took in—mountains, valleys, gorges, grass-cov-ered slopes, pastures, farms, lakes. The presence of man is to be felt; not of the local villages or town life, but the life of a great state. To the east, a superb valley dotted over with Chinese villages, surrounded with bushes rad trees; farther off, on several levels, chains of mountains, the tops of which were on a level with my eyes. To the west the ground undulates gradually towards the plain, beyond whioh are more mountains. On the south, magnificent pasture-land, intersected by the Great Wall with its ruined towers On our right, the Great Wall cracked and destroyed by centuries, and covered with plants; on our left, a slope towards the plain, laid out in artificial terraces, with fields of millet, oats, potatoes, and hemp. As to the Chinese, they are to seen everywhere, with long plaits and bareheaded, attired in a white shirt and blue trousers. The women are scantily clothed, and the children, whose heads are decked with flowers, are naked, or nearly so. What strikes one most is the sudden transition from the barrenest desert of yesterday to fertile and populous country of to-day. It seems like a village of small houses, covered with verdure, gardens and flowers, the whole extremely tidy and pleasant to the eye. This, then, is that swarming human ant-hill, China. Beauty of form affects the mind, but then it must bo understood that it is not the mere shell that we admire; we is only a beautiful case adjusted to the shape and value of a still more beautiful pearl within. The perfection of outward loveliness is the soul shining through its crystalline covering.—Jane Z’or/er. 7. ?