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[[underline]] Chapter VIII. [[/underline]]  153.

  On nearing the western edge of this belt of broken, scrubby country, we saw before us the Wang Fên Wa (see pp. 148 [[underline]] sq. [[/underline]] and note 151). In the foreground was a fair-sized artificial pond formed by damming up the depression between two of the clay ridges just mentioned.  Beyond this pond, on the farther ridge was a mound of irregular conical shape, its northern slope showing signs of recent disturbance.  Its present height we estimated at around 20 feet.  We walked around the pond to it.  In the piles of earth thrown up by the brick-hunters of the previous autumn were fragments of the common gray unglazed pottery and also several dressed stones---among them socketed lintels and pivoted door-leaves, their surfaces coarsely smoothed but without inscriptions or decorative designs of any kind (Pl. 30, figs. 1 and 2). [[superscript]] (157) [[/superscript]] Just to the west of the mound was a plantation
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[[superscript]] (157) [[/superscript]] Commemorative inscriptions in connection with burials seem just to have been coming into use in China during Han times; but they did not become common until much later.
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of young pine-trees, and from its summit we had a fine view of the valley of the Yu Ho to the southward, with beyond it the dark-blue ranges of the T'ung-pai Shan, partly wrapped in steamy, low-lying, and amorphous clouds of mist.
  After giving the tumulus a careful inspection and deciding on a plan of operations, we left it and walked northeastwardly, back across the belt of "badlands" and out into the cultivated country.  We encountered several grave-mounds, some said to be of Han date but none of them large.  One, the most conspicuous for both size and position, was seated on what appeared to be the crest of the water-parting between the Huai and the Yu; on its summit was a small and ruinous T'u Ti Miao or shrine dedicated to the tutelary genius of the locality.  Distant not quite a mile from the Wand Fên Wa (from which it bore about N. 75° E.), its top was 48 feet higher than that of the latter.  It was called, our companions told us, the