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[[underlined]] CHAPTER VI. INVESTIGATING IN CENTRAL SHENSI (cont.). [[/underlined]]
[[underlined]] Departure for the Region
North of the Wei River. [[/underline]]
On March 21st our friends of the Famine Relief party left Hsi-an for the Ching River valley. Early the following morning a squad of solders appeared before our inn with two mule-carts and several saddle-horses kindly provided for us by the governor.  The carts, with our luggage, we sent on by the direct road to await us at Hsien Yang 咸陽 , a dozen miles west-northwest of Hsi-an, on the farther or left bank of the Wei (see route-map), [[insertion]] ^[[fig. 19 [[strikethrough]]  pl. L) [[/strikethrough]]]] [[/insertion]] [[strikethrough]] Fig. x), [[/strikethrough]] at the head of boat /navigation on that stream.  This town, of insignificant size even though walled, is the modern representative and still bears the name of the famous capital of the powerful but short-lived Ch'in Dynasty (221-207 B.C.). (70)
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(70) The historian Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien, writing only about a century after the overthrow of the Ch'in Dynasty, tells us that when its capital was sacked and fired by the bloodthirsty rebel leader Hsiang Chi 項籍 (also know as Hsiang Yü 項羽), it burned for three months.  Accounts which we heard locally declared that the Ch'in capital before its destruction extended for several miles along both banks of the Wei.
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We ourselves---Mr. Wenley, Mr. Ch'iu, Mr. Tung, and I---set out on horseback, with our escort and attendants, for the country to the north, beyond the Wei. (71) That stream flows in the general easterly di-
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(71) Gen. Liu Chên-hua had not yet had time to consolidate his hold on that part of the province, and was continually being threatened with local uprisings; on the fall of his superior, Marshal[[strikethrough]] l [[/strikethrough]] We P'ei-fu, in the autumn of 1924, he was forced to flee Shensi altogether.
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rection, some seven or eight miles north of Hsi-an Fu, and finally enters the Yellow River not far above the town of T'ung Kuan, the "Chinese Gibraltar" peveriously mentioned. [[strikethrough]] (page 79). [[/strikethrough]] The Wei basin is one of the most important regions, both historically and archaeologically, of any in China.