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[[underlined]] Chapter V. [[/underlined]]  92.
of its strength to natural position, must have been well-nigh as impregnable to direct assault as were ancient Babylon or early Constantinople.

[[underlined]] The Old City Area. [[/underlined]]
  The space enclosed by the ramparts was, we found, a slightly rolling plain, dotted with peasant hamlets and small modern graveyards, shaded by clusters of trees, but for by far the greater part given over to intensive cultivation.  That it had ever been wholly built over seems indeed unlikely; in common with so many other fenced cities of both ancient and more recent times, Old Ch'ang-an doubtless contained large vacant areas designed for the growing of food in case of prolonged siege. [[superscript]] (64) [[/superscript]]
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[[superscript]] (64) [[/superscript]] This practice of enclosing within ramparts a larger area than was required for actual habitation and in which a beleagured population could support itself temporarily by the growing of crops appears more especially to have been an Asiatic development than a European one.  Examples are ancient Babylon; the southern part of the present Peking; the Avar "rings" of 8th century Europe; and the extensive ramparts of earth constructed about some of the cities of pre-Muhammadan Turkistan---the one around Bokhara some 85 miles in circuit.
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  As we might expect in a city occupied for so long a period as was the ancient Han capital, the present surface of the area within its walls, though undulating, was on the whole distinctly higher by several feet than was that of the country about it. [[superscript]] (65) [[/superscript]] The cart-roads passing through 
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 [[superscript]] (65) [[/superscript]]  The level of the area inside the walls of Peking, inhabited continuously for a period roughly three times as long as was Old Ch'ang-an, is today something like 20 to 30 feet higher than it was originally; [[overwritten]] verbal [[/overwritten]] ^[[oral]] communication from the late Dr. V. K. Ting, confirmed by my own observations.
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the gateways described above climbed, as we have seen, steeply upward as they entered the city enclosure.  The level of the latter had also been quite obviously raised somewhat, at least around its edges, by downwash from the inner slopes of the rampart about it.  Thus at one