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[[underline]]Chapter V.[[/underline]] 85.
thing in the way of a revetment. (58) It rested moreover, as we were able
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(58) Closely similar in their method of construction, save that they are provided with outer and sometimes also inner facings or revetments of large gray burnt brick, are the walls of many existing Chinese cities.  Occasionally, as in the "Red Basin" country of Szechuan, where an easily worked red sandstone is readily procurable, those revetments are of dressed stone laid in regular courses of equal thickness, recalling the [[underline]]opus isodomum [[/underline]] of Vitruvius.

It should be remarked, however, that such revetments, whether of brick or of stone, do not in themselves constitute true walls in the sense that they will stand alone; for they are, on the contrary, supported by the core of [[underline]] terre pisee [[/underline]] against which they lean.  Chinese city-walls almost always display a pronounced "batter" on both their outer and their inner faces.
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to determine at one point where it had been slightly undermined, directly on the surface of the soil, without the interposition of a stone plinth or a damp-course of any kind, such as was apparently already sometimes used even in Han times.

The present thickness of the [[underline]]agger [[/underline]] at its base was no less than 350 feet (see cross-section of wall, fig. [[strikethrough]]12). [[/strikethrough]] ^[[15).]] Protruding from the western side of the above-mentioned gap, near its top, were the remains of what had evidently been a drainage-system of gray unglazed [?] tile.  At the foot of the rampart's outer slope---still quite steep even after the lapse of over 2000 years---we found also , along the inner edge of the moat, traces of a narrow berm or terrace.  This was deeply furrowed---nearly obliterated, in fact, as a distinct feature of the fortification---by centuries of downwash and erosion.  It may originally have been 15 feet wide, perhaps even less---barely enough, it seemed, to withstand the thrust of the vast mass of rammed earth above and behind it.

The vertical height of the outer slope, above this berm, we found to average 25 feet; it must however, as we shall see in a moment, have been a good deal more than that when newly constructed.  We noticed particularly that there were in the line of the wall none of those rectan-