THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA - 6
The Great Wall and the Manchu conquest of China

THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA

The scenery from the Great Wall is very fine. The wall is here a dividing line between the high, rugged hills of China, which tower above us on the one hand, and the great sandy plains of Mongolia on the other, with dim mountain-summits beyond in the far distance. Over these barren, rocky spurs and acclivities, ascending to their very summits, winding about in irregular curves and zigzags, its serried battlements clear-cut against the sky on the topmost ridges, descending into dark gullies to appear again rising on the other side, the endless line of massive stone and brick runs on and on until lost to sight behind the farthest range. And so it goes for miles and miles, eastward to the Pechili Gulf, and westward, mostly in two great, rambling lines, along the border of the Gobi Desert and Kansu, until it ends among the foot-hills of the Nan Shan range. However we may regard it, whether as a grand conception for the defense of an empire, as an engineering feat, or merely as a result of the persistent application of human labor, it is a stupendous work. No achievement of the present time compares with it in magnitude. But it has outlived its usefulness. The powerful Tartar and Mongol hordes, whose sudden raids and invasions it was built to resist, are no more to be feared. The great Genghis and Kublai could not lead their people to gory conquest now as they did centuries ago. The Chinese civilization has endured, while the once conquering Mongols, the people who in their brightest days established an empire from the Black Sea to the China coast, and a court at Peking of such luxury and splendor as Marco Polo described, are now doomed to pass away, leaving nothing behind them but the traditions, and records, and ruins of a brilliant past. The wall stands as a sharp line of division between the tribes of the north and the Chinese. The latter, though repeatedly subdued, and forced to bear a foreign yoke, have shown an irrepressible vitality to rise like a phenix, and to reassert their supremacy and the superiority of their civilization. The Chinese to-day are under an alien dynasty, which is no longer powerful, and not more loved by the people than when it first usurped the Dragon Throne. The Manchus may yet be driven hack to their former home beyond the wall, to make way for a ruler of Chinese birth. Such is the dream of the Chinese people, and it may yet be realized. Read on The Great Wall of China... 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Romyn Hitchcock The Great Wall - UNESCO World Heritage Centre Forgotten Wonders: The Great Wall of China Great Wall of China Great Wall of China - Wikipedia The Great Wall @ National Geographic Magazine China-Wall Great Wall China Pictures Great Wall of China on Encyclopedia.com Great Wall, China Great Wall of China