[Illustration:  Chapel of the summer palace.]

From this gigantic effort to preserve the memory of the dead our party hastened to the Great Wall, an equally immense work to preserve the living from the incursions of their neighboring enemies.  Perhaps nowhere in the world are to be found in such close proximity two such striking evidences of the waste of human labor when undirected by scientific knowledge.  The wall is to-day, and was from the first, as worthless for the purpose it was intended to serve as the temples are for obtaining immortality for the bodies they enclose.

Leaving the town of Nang-Kao, the party soon found themselves at the entrance of the pass of the same name, and during the six leagues which separated them from the wall the spectacle kept increasing in grandeur.  The gorge at first was savage and sombre, shut in closely by the steep mountain-sides.  Soon the first support of the Great Wall appeared in a chain of walls, with battlements and towers, built over the principal mountain-chain, and as far as the eye could reach following all the peaks.  The effect of this wall is most striking.  Like some enormous serpent it stretches away in the distance, climbing rocks which appear impracticable, and which would be so without its aid.  The count was convinced that it would be as difficult to climb it for the purpose of defending it as it would be to do so in order to attack it.  This first support of the wall is in itself a giant work.

As the party advanced in the valley, in the far distance the crenelated outlines of two other similar and parallel walls appeared, situated also upon the crests.  The Great Wall was built about 200 B.C. as a barrier against the Tartar cavalry.  It is said to have been built in twenty-two years.  It was everywhere constructed of the materials at hand.  On the plains it was built of a core of earth, pounded, and faced with tiles, the top being also covered with tiles and furnished with a parapet.  On the mountains of stratified rock the facing was made of masonry, and the core of earth and cobble-stones.  Where the rock is such as fractures irregularly, the wall is of solid masonry, tapering to the top, which is sharp.  Throughout its whole length it is defended by towers occurring every few hundred feet.  Every mountain-pass and weak point was defended by a fortified tower.  At present the wall is in various conditions of preservation, according to the materials used in its construction.  In the valleys, which were the points to defend, it has gradually crumbled to a mere heap of rubbish, which the plough year by year still further scatters.

The Great Wall is, however, a wonderful monument of the labor and organization of the Chinese nation two thousand years ago.  The illustration is from a photograph taken on the spot by one of the party.  In order to take a view which should be most effective the camera was placed upon the wall itself.